Police warn on carrying large amounts of cash as Stokvel and savings club robberies increase

Over the past month police in Nelson Mandela Bay have on several occasions warned the organisers and investors in stokvels and savings clubs not to move around with large sums of money and to rather make use of electronic banking solutions to distribute and share the money.

It is with great disappointment that both police Cluster Commanders of Nelson Mandela Bay have seen that these warnings were not adhered to and that these stokvel clubs just look the other way and continue to operate with large sums of cash in their possession.

Today there were another two incidents where stokvel moneys were withdrawn from banks, and once the carriers reach their destinations, armed robbers shows up and take all of it.

For the past two weeks there were seven (7) stokvel robberies totaling just under R430 000 in the Motherwell Cluster alone. This means that there are investors that lost R430 000 due to the negligence of their stokvel investment organisers.

The Motherwell Cluster Commander, Major General Dawie Rabie today expressed strongly that these stokvel organisers does not seem to have the best interests of their investors at heart, and investigations have been launched to probe these organisers who blatantly ignore police warnings and then proceed to have these moneys robbed from them. “Investors should do research on their stokvel club organisers before joining and make sure that their investments will be kept safe and distributed in safe ways back to them. There should be minimum risk of being robbed by making use of electronic transfers. While this is continued not to be done, more robberies will take place and more investors will go empty handed”