Municipal employee arrested in theft case

An Ekurhuleni municipal employee has been arrested and criminally charged in a theft of council-owned property case in Olifantsfontein.

ALSO READ: BFS recovers stolen goods worth R1.5m

This is not an isolated incident, as other similar cases were reported in Boksburg, where municipal officials were nabbed for helping themselves to municipal properties in the City’s parks department.

In the latest case in Olifantsfontein, on April 12, EMPD Loss Control and Investigations Unit received a tip-off from Parks security that the steel palisade fence at Olifantsfontein parks had been stolen from the premises.

Investigators launched an investigation and the gathered evidence revealed the suspect was a council employee.

“The employee was seen on video arriving at parks in a municipal-owned truck and loading three steel palisade fences of up to 2.5m in length onto the truck.

“With the assistance of Olifantsfontein SAPS, the suspect was arrested and detained at Olifantsfontein Police Station, where he was charged with theft,” said Joy Mdluli, EMPD media liaison officer.

Previous theft cases in Boksburg, Germiston

The Advertiser previously reported on several cases of theft, an illegal behaviour that seems to be a chronic problem within the parks department.

In one of the cases, the EMPD arrested three suspects who were employees of the City’s service provider (a security company) in connection with the robbery of goods from the City’s Germiston Waste Depot.

During the incident, the depot was robbed of items, including vehicle tyres, office furniture, fridges, microwaves and other valuable items.

The Germiston incident came a few months after a gang of robbers stormed the metro’s parks department on Railway Street in Plantation, stealing eight batteries from the trucks parked in the yard.

In August 2015, municipal employees were nabbed for stealing equipment from the City’s park department in Railway Street, Plantation in Boksburg.

The bust came after management had been left baffled by the mysterious continuous disappearance of expensive equipment from their storage rooms, between June and August in that year.

An investigation was launched that led to the arrest of two municipal employees and a garden services provider in August. The missing equipment, which includes a bush cutter and chainsaws worth thousands of rands were also recovered during the arrests.

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