The Gatesville Neighbourhood Watch said more could have been done to try and find the eight-year-old girl who was kidnapped in the area last week.
Abirah Dekhta was snatched from a school lift club vehicle in the area on Friday morning.
The chairperson of the neighbourhood watch, Fowzia Veerasamy, was one of the first people on the scene.
She said the incident wasn’t treated with the urgency it required.
“We just feel that the first hour was wasted with vans standing in the road of Athlone police, officials sitting in the vans on their phones. The Neighbourhood Watch gathered intel to make their investigations smoother but we were chased away like dogs – which made the community angry.”
Veerasamy added that the family of the kidnapped child tried to get the officers on the scene to do more.
“We had the family banging their hands on the police vans, shouting at them, ‘you sitting in these vehicles, you not doing anything’. We want some action, at least look and attempt to do something they just sat in the van and wait for the station commander to tell them to do something”.
She noted that residents were also angry that their community was at the scene of the crime.
“The children, over the course of the weekend, didn’t even attempt to play outside everyone was just panicking and thinking what if.”
According to Cape Town police, Dekhta is yet to be found.
The police further said that due to the sensitivity of the case, no finer details would be divulged.
-EWN
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