In December 2018, VPUU was given the go-ahead to carry out a safety survey in the eThekwini Municipality of KwaZulu-Natal.
The Safety Survey forms part of the broader eThekwini Safety Audit, carried out by the eThekwini Safer Cities Unit in partnership with VPUU, AFUS and UN-Habitat. The Safety Survey falls into stage one of four broad stages of the Safety Audit, preceding and informing subsequent stages.
The purpose of the audit is to explore factors contributing to crime and vulnerability in order to identify priority crime prevention areas. This is important in order to better inform policy and develop a safety and crime prevention strategy.
Due to our extensive experience with surveys and urban safety programmes, VPUU came on board as an ‘implementing agent’. Lead by our Knowledge Management team, local EPWP fieldworkers underwent a series of training sessions so as to prepare them for the fieldwork. The training began in Durban in January 2019 in order to meet the completion deadline of the end of February.
VPUU’s Nhlanhla May conducting the Safety Survey training
EPWP workers and SCU staff during the Safety Survey Training
We trained the fieldworkers in map-reading as well as the use of open source mobile applications for navigating (MAPS.ME) and survey data collection (ODK).
A pair of fieldworkers in training go through a practice run of the survey questionnaire in ODK
After 27 days in the field, the 40 trained fieldworkers completed their work on 1 March 2019. In total, 2448 survey interviews were conducted in 106 of the total 110 wards across the entire municipality.
Fieldworkers look over a ward map, discussing deployment strategies before setting out
A fieldworker on her way to a survey reference point to conduct a survey
