Eight manhole covers were recovered due to the vigilance of a few residents and a security company early yesterday morning (1 June).
Fanie van Rooyen, who has been living in the neighbourhood for over 35 years, noticed loud noises from the street at around 4am, he told the Record. He believed the men making the noise were those usually picking trashcans for recyclable goods on Monday mornings before Pikitup comes around, but said it started suspiciously early.
“I decided to keep my ears to the ground,” he said.
Just about an hour later a neighbour of his sent a message to a community WhatsApp group they had created to say a manhole cover was just stolen in front of his house.
“I thought of the suspicious men outside on the veld near my house and decided they couldn’t have moved far out of the area – I decided to try and trace them,” Van Rooyen said.
He drove along Ontdekkers Road in the direction of Krugersdorp, hoping they had followed the main route, but eventually found the three suspects quite close to home in De Vries Street.
“They went as far as to try and convince me they were only carrying paper and cardboard on their recycling trolleys,” but he dug a bit deeper, he said.
“Eventually, underneath the big white plastic bags, I found a manhole cover and knew they were the ones stolen this morning.”
Meanwhile, one of the neighbours had phoned his security company, Apcan Security control room manager Herman Coetzee confirmed. Once they responded to De Vries Street, they found eight manhole covers that were allegedly stolen that morning. The covers were returned to Van Rooyen’s house, where one was put back in its rightful place in front of his house.
Van Rooyen said he is not pleased with the Krugersdorp Police’s slow response to the scene, nor with Mogale City’s attitude towards the recovery. He told the Record he found six of the covers’ rightful places in the neighbourhood and will be “doing the municipality’s job” putting them back into place during the week.
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