Thieves now steal fuel from parked vehicles
MANZINI - Motorists and the police now have a new crime that they have to deal with.
Thieves have found a new way to steal fuel as they are now targeting parked cars at night, cut the fuel pipes underneath the vehicles and siphon the fuel.
Recently, the syndicate went on a rampage at Ngwane Park in Manzini, as a number of motorists found their vehicles without fuel in the morning and fuel pipes cut open.
According to a source, who was also a victim, he said at Ngwane Park, there were dozens of cases where cars parked in the yard and streets had fuel drained.
He said the manner in which the fuel pipes were cut; it looked like the thieves crawled under the parked car, sniped the fuel line and collected the fuel in containers.
“The painful thing is that they are damaging the cars instead of just siphoning the fuel.
“This is costly to us because despite the fact that we have lost our fuel, we need to replace the fuel pipes in our cars,” the source said.
Suspects
He said they did not have any suspects at the moment, but highlighted that the suspects probably wanted to sell it (probably to grass cutters), considering the volumes stolen.
He added that the thieves targeted higher socio-economic areas as Ngwane Park was a semi-suburb.
Furthermore, the source said they had spoken as neighbours to be on high alert at night and be on the lookout for any information that would help them and the police to bring the syndicate to book.
He said the good thing was that government banned the selling of fuel to people who were carrying containers.
Once more, the source said fuel had always been the target for thieves, but usually through siphoning it.
However, he said modern cars often had anti-siphon devices fitted, which made it difficult to put a hose down through to the tank.
Also, he said other vehicles had locking fuel caps.
“Our advice to motorists is to park vehicles in secure places and be vigilant, especially at night,” the source said.
Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said the police were not aware of such a case.
However, it is worth noting that some of the victims shared their experiences on how the fuel was stolen on various social media platforms.