While many small businesses in the Laudium and Erasmia area are battling to make ends meet because of the poor economy, ongoing crime is making life even harder for them.
Reports of theft, robberies and break-ins are becoming more common in the area, with the local CPF, under the leadership of chair of the Pakistan South Africa Association, Zahid ul Zama, seemingly more interested in posing for the camera, while the Police seemingly have no clue as to how to combat the ongoing crime, nor even the will to tackle the problem.
One of the more common crimes affecting local businesses is criminals posing as customers, targeting businesses and then freely walking the streets.
This follows one of the latest incidents, where a Black female, pretending to be a customer and captured on CCTV footage, stands accused of stealing an iPhone 13 from a shop last Thursday afternoon (Sept 17), at around 4:30pm. The incident took place at Dharti Spice Shop, at the corner of 12th Avenue and Olivine Street, Laudium, near Yaseen’s.
Saleh Sadhu, the shopkeeper and a business partner at Dharti Spice Shop, told the Laudium Sun, “I was inside the shop and there were two customers at the time, an Indian and an African. I was serving the Indian customer and when that customer was done, I attended to the African woman, who I believed was an interested customer. The woman was asking me a lot of questions. I was standing at the counter and she was repeatedly asking about Vicks and other cosmetic products that are kept behind the counter. I was showing her the products one by one because I wanted to assist her and thought she was genuinely interested in buying something from the shop. While I was checking the cosmetic products for her and showing them to her, she grabbed my white iPhone 13 that I had kept near the till. I was concentrating on assisting her and did not realise at that moment that she had taken the phone. After I showed her the products, she suddenly told me that she would come back another time and then she left the shop. I continued with my work and sat at the counter as there were no other customers, but shortly afterwards I realised that my phone, which I had kept near the till, was missing. At first, I did not think that the phone had been stolen. I thought that I might have misplaced it somewhere in the shop. I started checking around the shop and looked in different places where I could have left it, but the phone was nowhere to be found. I then contacted my business partner and told him that I could not find my iPhone. We decided to check the shop’s CCTV footage to see what had happened. When we went through the footage, we discovered what had actually happened. I then realised that while I was busy showing the African woman the cosmetic products she had been asking about and had turned my back to get the products from the shelf, she had stolen the iPhone from the counter. It was very upsetting for me because I was simply trying to assist a customer and never expected something like this to happen inside my shop. It was really a terrible day for me. I hope other shopkeepers and businesses in the area will also be careful when dealing with thieves who come into their shops and ask many questions while distracting them.”
Imtiyaz Patel, the other partner of Dharti Spice Shop, told the Laudium Sun, “I was not in the shop at the time, so I cannot comment much about what happened. All I can say is that we checked our CCTV footage and saw who stole the iPhone. We know who the woman is and we believe that she lives or works in the area, so I believe she will be caught very soon. I am really concerned about the ongoing crime that we as a community are faced with each day. It is time that the Laudium CPF, together with the local Police, do much more when it comes to fighting crime in our community. I am not saying that they are doing nothing, but from what we are seeing, there does not seem to be enough fear among criminals when it comes to committing crime. These criminals are committing crimes whenever they want, without fear of even being caught and this is becoming a serious concern for other business owners and residents who I have spoken to. We need proper law and order in our community. People need to know that if they commit a crime, there will be consequences and they will be held accountable. As business owners, we want to feel safe in our own shops and we want our customers and employees to feel safe as well. We need to see more Police patrols and the CPF Patrollers on our streets. If we do not take action now and work together as a community to enforce law and order, I fear that crime will become an even bigger problem in the coming months, which we will not be able to stop.”
