PE's 10111 collapses

NELSON Mandela Bay's police emergency call centre 10111 communication system came to a standstill for almost five hours yesterday and officers sounded alarm bells that the 30-year-old system was on the verge of collapse.

This comes just days after it was reported in a Weekend Post exposé that the more than R1-billion contract deal that would have overhauled the system was being probed by the elite investigating units the Hawks and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU).

The contract, awarded in 2009 by the SA Police Service, would have resulted in a new hi-tech radio communication network, called Tetra, operating from three state-of-the-art control rooms in Port Elizabeth, East London and Mthatha.

Instead the buildings, with a contract price of R220-million, are standing empty and the R920-million Tetra system, including radios, is locked away in storage. -