Numerous reports in recent months indicated random acts of theft out of motor vehicles despite the presence of car guards and parking bay attendants stationed at the hotspots in town.<\/p>\n
This includes shopping centres and parking bays along Cowen Ntuli Street, Lilian Ngoyi, John Magagula Street, OR Tambo Street and Walter Sisulu Street.<\/p>\n
The Centre where Nando’s is situated provides parking for just over 100 cars, including for other businesses alongside such as Scooters Pizza, a spare parts and DVD shop.<\/p>\n
Senior Manager at Nandos, Susan Maskeo, said that the problem was affecting the unsuspecting public for several months and recently escalated with more frequent incidents occurring weekly – and continues to do so.<\/p>\n
“The owner, Mr Quintus Pratt, decided to put up warning signs that are visible to members of the public making use of the parking around the whole centre, as increased means of creating awareness regarding the problem,” Ms Maseko said.<\/p>\n
Car guards at the centre – one of which is employed by a security company, as well as the Middelburg SAPS – who receive these reports as they occur, have so far failed in not only apprehending suspects but also preventing thefts out of motor vehicle at the Centre and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
As a result it appears that criminals have increased their activities and there’s no end in sight.<\/p>\n
The criminals are widely thought to be a group of young men that work together as a gang targeting almost everyone at will in the Middelburg CBD. yaseen@mobserver.co.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ongoing incidents of theft out of motor vehicle across the Middelburg Central Business District has prompted Nando’s Middelburg Management to put advisory signs warning the public to ensure their car is locked and no valuables left in the car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":9931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2885,7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-crime-news","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Crime News"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}