Whilst the closure of many streets with security gates, in parts of Laudium and Erasmia has resulted in crime dropping in these areas, crime still continues in the area, especially petty crime.
One of the most common petty crimes committed in the area, is the theft of dustbins that just go missing when residents keep their bins outside their property on the scheduled day for the Municipal trucks to empty. This follows yet another theft of a bin, which was brought to the attention of the Laudium Sun, for stats purposes, so that other residents could be warned and be more vigilant. The bin was stolen last Wednesday (Oct 30) on Bengal Street, in Ext 3, after the owner of the house kept the bin outside her property, as it was the scheduled day for the Municipal truck to empty the bin. Owner, Lee-Anne Moonsamy, told the Laudium Sun, “Every Wednesday the Municipal truck does the
rounds on our street, at around 11am. It is almost customary for residents to take out their bins and place it outside their property for the refuse to be collected. On this Wednesday, my husband was at work as usual and I was busy doing my usual sewing inside the house. As is normal, with the sound of the sewing machine, I am unable to pay attention to the sound of the refuse truck when it arrives, thus I take out two dustbins before time so that when the refuse truck comes, it could be collected even if I am not aware that they are outside, then later in the afternoon I go collect the bins to keep them inside once they are emptied. We have in total four dustbins, two that are used for the main house where our family lives and two bins are kept at the back of the property where we have a tenant renting a room. So on this particular day I took out the two bins as normal and went back to do my sewing. However when I went outside later to fetch the bins, there was only one bin. The other one was missing, I could not believe it. I went around the area to check if perhaps the dustbin collectors in mistake left our bin in front of our neighbour’s house by mistake, but it was nowhere to be found. The stolen bin is black and has our house number, 551 written on it. We were told that if we painted the number of our house in large figures, it would not get stolen, yet it did. My suspicions are that the thief or thieves who steal these bins use it to collect water. With the shortage of water lately they probably took it to collect water.”
Lee-Anne’s neighbour, Mahesh Jashi told the Laudium Sun that three of his bins were stolen over a period, adding, “In one of the incidents when my bin was stolen, I went on a search for my dustbin and found it in Itireleng being used to brew alcohol. Then when my bin was stolen again and then again, I resorted to poking holes in it, which would make it useless for thieves to use it for water or any other liquid substance. Perhaps the City Council should introduce bins with holes on the sides and the bottom, allowing only water to pass through then only the refuse will be contained inside,” Mahesh remarked.
