Petty crime continues to be a headache for Laudium residents, with police seemingly uninterested in tackling this nagging problem.
According to reports from residents, many nyaopes who freely walk the streets of Laudium, are responsible for the petty crimes with residents appealing to the police to be more proactive by at least implementing ‘stop and search’ operations. Residents say that the petty criminals sell their stolen wares to local drug merchants in exchange for drugs and the police are aware who the merchants are, but work in cahoots with them.
This follows a number of incidents of petty crime that have taken place recently, which have been reported by concerned residents to the Laudium Sun. In one of the latest incidents reported, a home on Indigo Str was left without electricity, to the ire of the home owners.
Last Friday (March 10), the Laudium Sun received a call from a community member complaining about a stolen meter on Indigo Street. Homeowner, Ila Bhana, told the Laudium Sun “On Friday morning at around 4:30am I woke up to have a shower and I switched the lights on but there was no electricity so I instinctively thought it was loadshedding. I then checked my phone to confirm the loadshedding schedule, but I couldn’t seem to access the schedule because my network was acting up. I then had a shower in the dark and woke my kids up at 6am to get ready for school, but there was still no electricity. So I thought that the loadshedding could’ve probably been for 4 hours that morning. I did not pay much attention to it as the mornings are usually hectic when there is loadshedding. I got my kids ready for school, and dropped them off at Jacaranda Primary. When I returned, I got busy with my usual chores waiting for the electricity to come back on. At approximately 10:30am I sent out a message on our community group enquiring from other residents about the electricity. Many people on the group responded that they all has electricity. I then remembered reading in the Laudium Sun about all the meter thefts, so I went outside to check my meter box. I was stunned to see that all the wires had been cut in the meter box and the meter was missing. I was furious since this was not the first time that our meter box had been tampered with. I don’t even know when this meter box was vandalized as I did not hear any unusual noises or anything. I followed the long exhausting procedure and opened up a case at the Laudium Police Station. After that I called the Council and gave them my case number. They fed me the usual story that a van would come out as they’ve logged a job card on the system. I waited for the entire weekend and nobody came out to fix the box. I then called again on Monday morning March 13 at 8am and told them that I’d received a reference number on Friday, March 10 and nobody had come out to attend to my problem. The team only came out at 10am on Monday to repair my meter box. This is really ridiculous. I had to sit for an entire weekend without electricity.”
Hanif Patel who is the owner of B&H Tailor on Indigo Street told the Laudium Sun, “We are all really fed up. We are losing alot of business due to all the load shedding and the situation has gotten even worse for everyone because now during loadshedding, our meter boxes are being targeted. We pay our rates and taxes every month and yet we still have to suffer like this, with poor service from the Council. This is becoming really ridiculous. How can we live like this?”
