CAPE TOWN - Parliament's police portfolio committee has called the South African Police Service (SAPS) station commanders of the five police stations in South Africa with the highest incidents of violent crime to account on Tuesday.

In a statement on Sunday, committee chairman Francois Beukman said it was critical for violent crime to be addressed as the number one priority of the SAPS.

The committee decided that the station commanders of Hillbrow, Johannesburg Central, Kagiso, Mitchells Plain, and Nyanga should appear before the committee so that the current SAPS strategy on combatting contact crime could be evaluated, he said.

"Murder, attempted murder, robbery, and rape are the crimes that affect the safety of communities and the necessary strategic and operational measures should be taken to intervene in the top five crime stations."

The committee had always emphasised that SAPS needed to act pro-actively to ensure that police stations had the necessary resources to deal with the crime profile in the five precincts.