Criminals prowl Mannathoko ward
| Wednesday September 2, 2015 15:02
Plot owners are forced to replace stolen building materials. The thieves target items such as water tanks and cement. The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) is also losing its electric cables to criminals. A walk around some of the residential houses reveals extensive damage left by the thieves. Some houses, which had doors, are now without doors after the thugs had run away with them. The criminals have also left the houses without windowpanes.
A resident of new Mannathoko ward, Warona Olebile, is one of the victims of crime in the area. She says the thugs struck twice at her residential plot and got away with electric cables. She says in the first instance, “The thieves broke into my house and removed all the wired electric cables destroying electric sockets in the process.”
She says after replacing stolen cables, the thieves cut BPC electric cables just a few days after connecting electricity.
Another resident, Thapelo Obateng, fell victim when the thieves dismounted his 2,000 litre water container and stole it. Efforts to trace it failed. Commenting on what could be done to curb crime in the area, Obateng appealed to the police: “Beef up security to nab the perpetrators and there should be a lead to the massive theft taking place in the area.”
He says a new location like Mannathoko was bound to be a crime hotspot due to lack of communication from residents who in most cases do not know one another.
“Crime in our locality is fuelled by the fact that we don’t know each other as neighbours. The situation is not helped by the fact that some of the plots are not developed while owners of developed plots are mostly absent due to work commitments outside Serowe. We cannot leave everything in the hands of the police and it may help us to form neighbourhood crime prevention groups. I think as residents, we should use social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to help us network in the fight against crime. It will also help if the authorities help in de-bushing the area as the thugs easily take cover from the trees that dot the landscape,” he says.
Dineo Gabaikanngwe is one of the residents of the area who has seen it all. She says she has seen many water tanks being stolen from unoccupied homes. In most cases the thieves give the impression that they are the owners of the affected homes only for reality to strike when the real owners report the theft to them.
“Sometimes thieves will come and empty the water tanks and collect them later,” she said in frustration.
“Theft is committed by either those engaged by plot owners or criminal elements taking advantage of the absence of home owners and this suggests that neighbours should know each other to curb crime.”
Assistant superintendent Omphile Gayani of Serowe police confirmed this week that criminals haunt the residents of Mannathoko ward.
“Mannathoko is a developing residential area therefore there are not many people in the area and it is still bushy,” he said.
“Many residential houses at the locality are newly built and are vacant, most of the owners stay outside Serowe where they work. These criminals target those houses that are left unguarded and those under construction where they steal mostly electricity cables and building materials.”
Gayani declares worriedly that the criminals also steal the BPC electricity cables that connect from the poles into the houses.
“Because of this predicament, we had in the past met with the BPC and the clusters and we did patrols in the area when the crime was at its peak. Although we have not apprehended anyone to date, we have not registered any reports from the area and our clusters are still undertaking patrols at the locality,” he says. Gayani says house breaking is growing at an alarming rate in Serowe and therefore he encourages residents whose houses are vacant in the area to hire security companies or to have a family member to take care of their property.
Communications manager at BPC, Spencer Moreri, also confirmed the allegations of theft of electricity cables. He said handling cables was not only costly to BPC but also posed danger to the thieves and other people.
“We plead with the public to be vigilant of these criminals and to report them because they expose live cables which are highly dangerous and could kill,” he said.
“We also warn the criminals to desist from fiddling with live wires because they will die in the process. This situation also affects our service delivery as we have to regularly change and fix stolen cables, and the cost of this damage is about P250,000.”