Smallholding owners warned to take control of their properties
During stop-and-go operations conducted at night last week, more than 200 illegal foreigners were discovered on smallholdings outside of the city in the direction of Louis Trichardt.
POLOKWANE – Property owners contribute to the rise in crime on smallholdings in the Polokwane municipal area.
This is the view of members of the Westenburg police, who say in actively monitoring crime patterns through various operations, they discovered that some owners of businesses operating from smallholdings house foreign nationals.
This, according to Westenburg police station commander, Maimele Pilusa, may potentially aid criminals.
During stop-and-go operations conducted at night last week, more than 200 illegal foreigners were discovered on smallholdings outside of the city in the direction of Louis Trichardt.
Last week, Polokwane Observer reported on multiple properties that had recently been broken into in this area.
Read more: Crimes on plots outside the city an imminent threat to residents
At the time, area Community Policing Forum (CPF) chairperson, Lorraine Mothiba said they were being outnumbered by the perpetrators despite efforts in conducting Operation Disrupt – where vehicles with blue lights are used to patrol at strategic hours to scare them off, further worth mentioning that police only patrol main roads while the perpetrators hide inside the plots.
Although room for suspects from outside the area exists, Pilusa reminds residents that criminals often only take advantage of homesteads which they are familiar with and have close monitoring of the ins and outs of the targeted inhabitants.
“There’s a chance that the actual people who commit these crimes are sent and given accurate information of what to take and where to take it from, by these undocumented employees. Similarly, since they work on the premises they have sufficient information on when to pounce as they are in the same vicinity of the premises they are targeting, sometimes even more often than residents of the area themselves.”
Even though the police cannot dictate who or how smallholding owners should employ or keep on their property, Pilusa said upon a request for an employee register information in businesses, they found that only a few employees were correctly placed to work in a single business out of the hundreds who were found working during the day last week.
He pleaded with home and business owners to take responsibility in this regard, for the sake of their own safety.
