An employee of the local municipality feared for his life on June 4 when he was detained and threatened with a knife by a member of the community.

Antonello Vertyn, who has been working as a machine operator at JB Marks’ Illegal Dumping and Parks department since 2018, says he and a colleague arrived at a site at the Sarafina Stadium in Ikageng at around 10:10 that morning. They had started cleaning the site in front of the stadium gate when a member of the community arrived with a knife, took the key to the machine and threatened Vertyn.

The incident was caught on video. The video was taken by Vertyn’s colleague. The reason why the member allegedly held Vertyn at knifepoint is because the community was allegedly promised by officials that they would receive payment when they cleaned the canals, but they have not received any payment in two months.

In the video, the man can be heard threatening Vertyn and demanding payment. During the incident, Vertyn managed to contact the infrastructure supervisor, but received no response.

He then contacted his boss, David Thibedi, and the man immediately jumped into his vehicle and sped to the scene.

“David managed to get the situation under control and calm down,” says Vertyn.

“If it hadn’t been for David, I don’t know what would have happened. Security only arrived after him, when the situation was already under control.”

“David did everything in his power and for that I am eternally grateful. Management failed me.”

Vertyn goes on to say that the police were not called to the scene and the suspect was not arrested. Apparently, Vertyn is just expected to continue with his work as if nothing had happened.

“I am terribly disappointed. To this day, nothing has been done about the matter. No one even asked if I needed help. The municipality should put the safety of its workers first. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

According to him, this is not the first time something like this has happened and they regularly struggle with such incidents.

“I had to get help at my own expense and was admitted to M-Care for a week. All this because of promises made by officials to the community. It is the municipality’s responsibility to create a safe working environment for their workers.”

The Herald has inquired about the incident with the local municipality, but is still waiting for a response.

Watch the video here: