Geisha Kow­lessar

Frus­trat­ed busi­ness own­ers of Sea Lots in Port-of-Spain are con­tem­plat­ing evac­u­a­tion of the crime-in­fest­ed com­mu­ni­ty af­ter brazen day­light gun at­tacks, thefts, dam­age to prop­er­ty and re­peat­ed de­mands for pro­tec­tion mon­ey. Some, how­ev­er, said they had al­ready in­vest­ed too much in­to their busi­ness­es and there­fore had lit­tle choice but to tack­le the crim­i­nal el­e­ment head on. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of In­te­ri­or Har­mo­ny, In­grid Si­mon said while she sup­port­ed the ef­forts of her col­leagues in their an­ti-crime bat­tle, her busi­ness had al­ready suf­fered tremen­dous fi­nan­cial loss­es.

She re­count­ed an in­ci­dent last Fri­day when two of her cus­tomers were robbed while wait­ing to col­lect tiles they had just pur­chased.

The in­creased at­tacks on cus­tomers, Si­mon lament­ed, have forced her to re­lo­cate her ware­house from Sea Lots. "Every­day truck­loads are go­ing. We need to get the goods out of the ware­house be­cause they stole from us al­ready. "It was about 16 peo­ple on a Sun­day af­ter­noon," Si­mon re­called dur­ing an in­ter­view at her of­fice on Pi­o­neer Dri­ve yes­ter­day. But for the Fur­ness Trinidad Group of Com­pa­nies re­lo­ca­tion is not an op­tion. Chair­man William Fer­reira said mil­lions of dol­lars have been in­vest­ed in his com­pa­ny ren­der­ing it al­most im­pos­si­ble to leave Sea Lots.

The re­sult, he said, was to fight crim­i­nals by con­stant­ly en­hanc­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. "We are spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars a month in hav­ing ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty for the pro­tec­tion of not on­ly our busi­ness, but for staff," Fer­reira said. Cit­ing that the area is al­so plagued by de­plorable road con­di­tions, Fer­reira said this has ex­cer­bat­ed the al­ready trou­bling sit­u­a­tion. "Trucks com­ing in have to ma­noeu­vre the pot­holes and slow down. "We had one in­stance two weeks ago where an in­sur­ance per­son was slow­ing down and was held up at gun­point," Fer­reira said. "The thieves," he said, "made off with all the vic­tim's valu­ables and cash."

Echo­ing Si­mon's con­cerns, Fer­reira said po­ten­tial cus­tomers have be­come afraid to en­ter Sea Lots. "This is caus­ing a ma­jor con­cern to us be­cause our clients don't want to come to Sea Lots for fear of be­ing at­tacked. "Even job ap­pli­cants have turned down in­ter­views when they learn they have to come to Sea Lots," Fer­reira said. The Fur­ness Chem­i­cal plant, he added, has been bro­ken in­to on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, the most re­cent be­ing two weeks ago. "The thieves came through the con­crete walls, stole mi­crowaves and prod­ucts. "They tried to get in­to the vault, but couldn't. By the time they fin­ished bang­ing it up, not even we could get in­to it, " Fer­reira added.

Crim­i­nals In charge

Bent on ex­e­cut­ing their das­tard­ly schemes, "crim­i­nals", a spokesman from Caribbean Sal­vage Lim­it­ed said, "were run­ning things." Ac­cord­ing to him, de­mands have been made on busi­ness­men to pay pro­tec­tion mon­ey. "They said if we hired them to guard the premis­es, the crime will stop. "Things are get­ting more and more ter­ri­fy­ing," the frus­trat­ed busi­ness­man said. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion in Sea Lots as a hell hole," say­ing it was "far worse" than the glob­al eco­nom­ic slump. Ac­cord­ing to the spokesman, the com­pa­ny's port at Milling Av­enue, has been ren­dered al­most de­funct be­cause clients have been dri­ven away.

"Trucks com­ing to the port had the wind­screens smashed with big stones be­cause res­i­dents keep com­plain­ing that dri­vers were go­ing too fast or they were rais­ing dust. "The cus­tomers had to ap­pease them by bring­ing in wa­ter trucks, but it was no end to the hell and the clients just did not want to come back and who could blame them?" the spokesman asked. He said on the rare oc­ca­sions the port would be in use, the po­lice had to be brought in. "And you don't get the po­lice un­less you pay the po­lice. When you call them for prob­lems in this area they take a year and a day to come."

More in­fo:

Let­ter to the po­lice

A let­ter from eight com­pa­nies, de­tail­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in Sea Lots, was penned by wor­ried busi­ness­men and sent to Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gilbert Reyes on Ju­ly 17. In the let­ter busi­ness own­ers de­mand­ed the im­me­di­ate set­ting up of a po­lice mo­bile unit and reg­u­lar foot, mo­bile and bi­cy­cle pa­trols. "Should these vi­o­lent rob­beries con­tin­ue, our busi­ness­es shall be forced to close as no cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers or ser­vice providers would be will­ing to en­ter the area," the let­ter warned.

But crime-weary busi­ness own­ers ex­pressed lit­tle faith in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. "We have been meet­ing a lot of "kha­ki" peo­ple and promis­es like dirt, but they just don't fol­low up on any of them. "At one point we were think­ing it was part of a plan for the busi­ness­peo­ple to leave be­cause we are tired of beg­ging for help," the spokesman said.

Po­lice re­spond

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Reyes as­sured that "sys­tems were in place."

"We spoke to the busi­ness own­ers and have giv­en the as­sur­ance that sys­tems were in place to deal with the sit­u­a­tion and they would see re­sults very soon," Reyes said.

A child walks bare­foot­ed along a road at Sea Lots in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.