In the last Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Raphael John-Lall pro­vid­ed an overview of the im­pact that crime is hav­ing on the do­mes­tic busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. He cit­ed re­search and analy­sis con­duct­ed by two econ­o­mists at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and spoke with the co­or­di­na­tor of a con­fer­a­tion of busi­ness groups.

This week, he fol­lows up by talk­ing to the East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion as a case study of the im­pact of crime.

Like the rest of the coun­try, crime and in­se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ue to erode busi­ness con­fi­dence in the San­gre Grande area.

San­gre Grande is one of the largest towns in the north­east­ern part of the coun­try and its shop­ping dis­trict is used dai­ly by thou­sands of cit­i­zens who live there and who trav­el through the town dai­ly.

Pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA), Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, told the Busi­ness Guardian that con­sumers are spend­ing less mon­ey as they can no longer shop in peace in this area.

The EBMA is made up of over 150 busi­ness­es.

In the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Econ­o­mist Dr Re­gan De­o­nanan said crime neg­a­tive­ly af­fects not on­ly busi­ness­es but the en­tire na­tion­al econ­o­my as well.

Mo­hammed paint­ed a gloomy pic­ture of what the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in north-east Trinidad now faces.

“The town of San­gre Grande is usu­al­ly seen as a main town cen­ter for neigh­bour­ing dis­tricts from Matelot to Ma­yaro. Many peo­ple trav­el through this town to get to and from work. Per­sons trav­el­ling home in the evenings would take a walk through the city, they may do mi­nor shop­ping, meet and greet some friends. Due to the in­crease in crime, con­sumers are ha­rassed by ‘pests’ on the streets, ask­ing for mon­ey, fe­males are heck­led and feel un­safe, young work­ing men are bul­lied etc, the once peace­ful at­mos­phere has now be­come gloomy de­ter­ring con­sumers from late evening shop­ping.”

Be­cause of the un­friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment, he said busi­ness has “dwin­dled” in this area of Trinidad.

“In essence, late-night shop­ping has dwin­dled, which is now forc­ing busi­ness­es to close ear­li­er sim­ply be­cause we can­not meet our over­heads dur­ing ex­tend­ed late hours and we are con­cerned about rob­beries and sense­less killings,” said Mo­hammed.

He spoke of the costs that busi­ness­es in­cur be­cause of the spike in the crime rate.

“The pan­dem­ic has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed busi­ness­es and the busi­ness own­ers fi­nan­cial­ly, many SMEs are now forced to hire se­cu­ri­ty, at a sig­nif­i­cant cost to the busi­ness due to this in­crease in crime. Se­cu­ri­ty cost an av­er­age of $5,000 up­wards de­pend­ing on the num­ber of se­cu­ri­ty guards and the com­pa­ny they rep­re­sent. This has placed fur­ther strain on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.”

He al­so gave graph­ic de­tails of busi­ness­es be­ing robbed, home in­va­sions and prop­er­ty dam­age.

“Three busi­ness­es were bro­ken in­to in the last two weeks, many items stolen, busi­ness van­dalised, etc. De­liv­ery dri­vers, and shop­pers, have their ve­hi­cles bro­ken in­to reg­u­lar­ly and this neg­a­tive­ly af­fects all of us in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Home in­va­sions are now a ma­jor con­cern for all, many homes have been bro­ken in­to, peo­ple trau­ma­tised, etc. Many of these home in­va­sions are not even re­port­ed in the me­dia. Many peo­ple are afraid to re­port some of these in­stances be­cause they have lost faith in the au­thor­i­ties and are wor­ried that they will be sub­ject to re­venge at­tacks.”

He added that gang ac­tiv­i­ty has al­so im­pact­ed the “sense­less mur­ders” in the area.

Pro­posed so­lu­tion

In his state­ment, Mo­hammed made sev­er­al sug­ges­tions to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lems the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is fac­ing.

These so­lu­tions in­clude:

1. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of CCTV sys­tems.

2. For­ma­tion of neigh­bor­hood watch groups

3. Use of What­sApp safe­ty group in the busi­ness sec­tor

4. Grant­i­ng of FULS in a time­ly man­ner

5. In­crease in bor­der pa­trols for the east­ern seaboard

6. Pro­vi­sion of the nec­es­sary crime-fight­ing tools by the Min­istry to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, ve­hi­cles etc.

7. In­crease in youth train­ing pro­grammes.

8. Im­ple­men­ta­tion and man­age­ment of crime fight­ing strate­gies on time and mon­i­tor its re­sults.

De­vel­op­men­tal pro­pos­als

While he pro­posed short-term so­lu­tions, Mo­hammed al­so said in the long run the Gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty must work to­geth­er to de­vel­op this re­gion of the coun­try so that cit­i­zens have jobs and fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty and do not have to turn to crime.

“We be­lieve that the set­ting up of an agro-pro­cess­ing plant will great­ly as­sist the vast ma­jor­i­ty of farm­ers in this dis­trict, not on­ly al­low­ing them to earn a bet­ter in­come for their pro­duce but to aid with in­creased em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. De­vel­op­ment of ac­cess roads and ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture for farm­ers, will aid in the food pro­duc­tion for our com­mu­ni­ty.”

As in the rest of the world, he pro­posed de­vel­op­ing busi­ness­es based on clean en­er­gy.

“In keep­ing with sav­ing our en­vi­ron­ment, the set­ting up of wind tur­bines on the east coast and pos­si­bly so­lar farms as well, will sig­nif­i­cant­ly help with pro­duc­ing clean en­er­gy for the dis­trict and help re­duce the de­pen­den­cy on fos­sil fu­els for en­er­gy. De­vel­op­ments like this will sure­ly ben­e­fit the en­tire coun­try.”

He al­so said with­in the heart of the town of San­gre Grande, they can build a mul­ti-fa­cil­i­ty park­ing com­plex that will solve the park­ing is­sues plagu­ing the town.

“This fa­cil­i­ty can al­so be con­struct­ed to ac­com­mo­date a mi­ni-mall, gov­ern­ment of­fices, ven­dors and a rooftop tourist des­ti­na­tion point equipped with food, arts and craft ven­dors and tele­scopes etc to view the east­ern seaboard light­house etc.”

He added that they have start­ed their very own “Ah Taste of Grande” food fes­ti­val, which brings thou­sands of peo­ple from all over to taste their culi­nary spe­cial­ties.

“Our next event is card­ed for Re­pub­lic Day this year. This is now sup­ple­ment­ed by Damien Chow, one of our ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers de­vel­op­ment of the ‘Grande Food Hub’ lo­cat­ed on Al­fon­so St San­gre Grande, where we have a va­ri­ety of the best foods every week from Thurs­day to Sun­day that will def­i­nite­ly tin­gle your taste buds.”

Mo­hammed con­clud­ed by say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment must ad­dress de­vel­op­men­tal is­sues if it is to suc­cess­ful­ly bat­tle crime.

“By im­prov­ing our com­mu­ni­ty out­look and de­vel­op­ment, we hope to in­crease em­ploy­ment in San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons. This will al­low us to grow and be­come a ma­jor play­er in tourism on the east coast. In­creased em­ploy­ment will as­sist in crime re­duc­tion. Over­all, Gov­ern­ment needs to fight crime from all an­gles, but use an ap­proach that will ad­dress the eco­nom­ic hard­ship that leads to crime. Pro­vid­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties will be key in ad­dress­ing and al­le­vi­at­ing crime in the East.”

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