What is termed as petty crime, but is seriously affecting residents, is the ongoing theft of items from both residential and business properties in Laudium, which is not only causing hundreds of Rands of damage, but is also a huge inconvenience to the victims of such crime.
Whilst the police do not seem to be particularly interested in arresting the problem of crime and the influx of unemployed people into Laudium, many of whom now sleep in the area, in any space they find, be it parks or dilapidated building structures or even behind businesses in the CBD, residents are, on a daily basis, being confronted with the problem. This follows another incident of copper theft that took place last Saturday evening, from a home on Emerald Street, just before curfew time. Emerald Street resident. Poobalan Padayachy, told the Laudium Sun, “My family and I had finished supper and after watching some TV program and lazing around, as it was a Saturday night, we starting preparing for bed. At around 10:30pm, we suddenly heard the sound of water gushing from outside. At first I thought perhaps it had started raining, but when I peeped from the curtain, I realised it was not raining. Then, when I went to the bathroom, I realized that there was no water in the taps. I thought that it was perhaps the usual water cut by the council again, as we have been experiencing so many cuts recently. However, when I went outside the house to check where the water sound was coming from, I was shocked to find that the water copper pipe feeding from the outside meter into our house, was missing. Upon further inspection I found that a long piece of the pipe had been cut and stolen. I just cannot understand how someone could enter our yard and cut and steal the water pipe without seemingly any fear of being caught. Clearly it had to be someone desperate or someone high on drugs who stole the copper pipe, as they were not scared of the consequences of being caught by us or our neighbours. I quickly looked for a plumber to fix the leak, so as to stop so much water from being wasted. Fortunately I found a plumber on a Saturday night and I was lucky that he had new water copper pipes in stock. The plumber and his aide spent about 3 hours to sort out the problem. It cost me a lot of money to fix, which I could have used for other important things. These thieves disrupted our peaceful Saturday night. I don’t how the person or persons came in, because we have a secured place with devil’s fork fencing. Yet these brazen thieves managed to come into our yard and steal. I really suspect that the thief or thieves are probably these nyaope guys who walk around during the day, watching all our houses for any opportunity to steal whatever they can lay their thieving hands on. We normally don’t have a problem with crime in our area, because our street is usually very busy with many cars and pedestrians passing by. Clearly, we are now living in such desperate times and nowhere in Laudium can be regarded as safe any longer. I have not reported the theft to the police because I do not believe that they will do anything to catch the culprits.”
