Kloofendal security remains a headache
Although City Parks spokesperson Jenny Moodley said they take the allegations regarding the lack of security in the areas surrounding the Kloofendal Nature Reserve very seriously, it has been two weeks since she promised to comment.
She said that unfortunately the person in charge of the investigation was on leave. On about 13 July, she indicated that City Parks would comment “before the end of the day”, but that has yet to happen.
Members of the community are gravely concerned as to what the true motives were of the man that was caught trespassing at Kloofendal Nature Reserve on Friday, 6 July.
Read more: Could there be more to trespasser arrest at nature reserve?
Joggers alerted a Whatsapp group specifically acting as a platform to prevent poaching/ snaring/ trapping in the reserve, saying that they saw a number of suspicious men in the reserve at about 4pm. Various role-players were dispatched and one man was caught. He had a pair of welding gloves on his person and said that he was a welder on his way home. He said that on the Snipe/ Swift Street boundary of the reserve he saw a cat entering a water pipe and thought it a good idea to also use the pipe as a travel route and “to sit in the reserve for a while”. He even went as far as showing the group where he accessed the reserve via the pipe. He admitted that he had been in prison before on gun-related charges, said a person that was on the scene at the time of the incident.
Metro Police arrested the man on a trespassing charge. But in the light of a recent spike, not only in poaching incidents, but also house robbery and burglary in the areas surrounding the reserve, residents are worried that slack security at the reserve is turning it into a springboard for criminal activities in the area.
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