A Cape Flats church has closed its weekly soup kitchen after skurke burgled the hall and stole food and cooking equipment for the third time this year.
Congregants at Silvertown Baptist Church in Athlone got a skrik on Sunday when they arrived for Sunday service to find the kitchen ransacked and a door at the church hall forced open with a pick axe.
Church administrator, Johnny Cyster, says the slim skelms cut the electricity supply to bypass the church’s alarm system.
“At about midnight, we received a notification about a power outage from the security company and this morning we arrived to find this,” he says.
“They somehow unlocked the electrical box, which can only be opened with that key the municipal workers use, and put the electricity off.”
Cyster says the skelms stole pots, food from the pantry and freezers, and even damaged the gas stove as they dismantled the parts.
UPSET: Johnny Cyster from church.
“They will probably sell it as scrap metal, but they even stole the food we keep in this freezer for the seniors programme,” he says.
“The soup kitchen is part of our Lamp Post Project, which is an outreach to drug addicts in the community.
“We stand with two pots of soup at various lamp posts where we give them an opportunity to talk to us and if they want to get help, we help them to get into a rehab.
“When they come out of rehab, they often go and stay with the same friends, so we are now building a hostel to help them stay clean.
“But, now we have to [stop the outreach project] because this is the third time this year (we had a break-in).”
RANSACK: Broken door
Congregant, Sandra Adams, says she was hartseer to see a freezer full of food, that she kept for Christmas lunch, empty on Sunday.
“Every Thursday the seniors come here and we cook for them,” she says.
“This year for their Christmas lunch, we wanted to take them to Gordon’s Bay for a day at the beach, so we have been storing chicken and stuff in that deep freezer and now it’s gone.
“I hope people are not buying that stuff because it was meant for the community.
“Now I don’t know where we will get food for the elderly people.”
If you would like to assist the soup kitchen, call Sandra on 073 015 4946.