Bakwena Platinum Corridor Concessionaire (Pty) Ltd (Bakwena), had 38 of their volunteers assist at 8 voting stations during the elections held last Wednesday the 29 th May 2024.
These volunteers, through the assistance of Bakwena, have been trained in partnership with the South African Red Cross Society in First Aid level 1, 2 and 3 and form part of Bakwena’s Disaster Management Teams within the communities residing along the Bakwena N1N4 route.
They were deployed on the day of the election to the various voting stations in the Hammanskraal, Modderspruit, Bokamoso, Dinokana and Groot Marico community. Their duties included assisting the elders, heavily pregnant women and the most vulnerable to move through the queues seamlessly to the voting station, they also attended to minor injuries on site. Through their assistance, a number of these volunteers had the opportunity to work with the IEC on the day.
Solomon Kganyago, Chief Operations Officer of Bakwena, says that “various groups of volunteers have been trained in First Aid Level 2, Disaster Management and Community based Health by the South African Red Cross Society. This initiative was embarked upon as a means of providing assistance to community members and schools, which are often the focal point of community activities, including elections. We are proud that our volunteer teams were actively involved in assisting members of their communities to cast their votes”.
In total, these teams participated as follows:
- Hammanskraal: assisted at 4 voting stations with 19 volunteers;
- Modderspruit: assisted at 1 voting station with 10 volunteers;
- Bokamoso assisted at 1 voting station with 4 volunteers;
- Groot Marico: attended to 1 voting stations with 1 volunteer
- Dinokana: attended at 1 voting station with 4 volunteers
“We are tremendously proud of the work performed by the Bakwena Disaster Teams which resulted in a smooth and incident free election in the communities surrounding the Bakwena N1N4 route, which is yet another stepping stone on our path to a mature democracy in South Africa,” concludes Kganyago.