- A City of Cape Town vehicle has been hijacked and torched.
- The driver, who was held at gunpoint, was left stranded in Mfuleni.
- The incident was expected to cause service delivery delays.
Parks and recreation service delivery in parts of Cape Town will be delayed by at least two weeks after a City employee was left stranded when his vehicle was hijacked and set alight in Delft on Thursday.
The driver from the department's standby team was travelling to fetch colleagues when he was hijacked at gunpoint by two men.
"He was on his way to fetch eight members of his team in Mfuleni after working the standby shift the night before. [This is] where teams rotate shifts and make themselves available for call-outs to attend to any fallen trees in their area," said mayoral committee member for community services and health Zahid Badroodien.
Badroodien added:
The truck was valued at around R580 000 and was carrying equipment worth R100 000.
The driver had to make his way from the scene to his workplace in Maitland and then reported the incident to the police. The other staff members were left stranded without transport to work in the areas planned for the day.
"[On Thursday], the team would have spent the day doing tree maintenance, root pruning and mowing of greenbelts and parks in Langa, Pinelands, Thornton, Maitland and Epping. Service delivery to those areas will now be delayed for at least two weeks while a replacement vehicle is sourced and resources are reallocated within the area," said Badroodien.
Trauma counselling and days off had been made available to the driver to recover from the incident.
"Unfortunately, this will also impact on the backlog as his role is critical for the team to be able to perform their function," said Badroodien.
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