KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Ter­rence Ram­per­sad says or­gan­ised crime is ham­per­ing busi­ness in the Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas and Freeport com­mu­ni­ties.

This af­ter he be­came a vic­tim when thieves cart­ed off 50 Liqui­fied Pe­tro­le­um Gas (LPG) tanks from his busi­ness on Sun­day.

CCTV footage showed two men wear­ing hood­ies climb­ing over the wall to Ram­per­sad’s Dai­ly Es­sen­tials Phar­ma­cy and Su­per­mar­ket along South­ern Main Road, Chase Vil­lage, around 2.20 am. The ban­dits cut the lock to the LPG cage at the front of the store. They threw the tanks over the wall. They al­so tried to prise the door to the Lot­tery Cen­tre, but with­out suc­cess.

Ram­per­sad be­lieves there is a gang of thieves tar­get­ing busi­ness­es in the area. He said it is ex­pen­sive to re­place 35 full and 15 emp­ty tanks and he will have to fork out $12,500 to re­pay Ram­co In­dus­tries Ltd for the items. He re­called ban­dits in po­lice uni­forms rob­bing busi­ness­man Ra­jen­dra Maye and his fam­i­ly at their Chase Vil­lage home last month.
 With many oth­er rob­beries in the area, Ram­per­sad said it co­in­cides with the emer­gence of crime hotspots in the com­mu­ni­ties.

“This is clear­ly or­gan­ised crime be­cause the man­pow­er to steal 50 tanks is ac­tu­al­ly a lot of men in­volved. From the cam­eras and maybe our in­ves­ti­ga­tions and from li­ais­ing with the Freeport po­lice, ob­vi­ous­ly, there were more. I am sure it is a group of men in here. We al­so spoke to Mr Alexan­der. He is fol­low­ing up on the sit­u­a­tion.”

As a res­i­dent of the area since birth, Ram­per­sad said crime is get­ting worse. While Ram­per­sad does not blame the Gov­ern­ment for it all, he said one of its roles is to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment con­ducive to busi­ness.

“The en­vi­ron­ment in the Freeport area is not con­ducive for busi­ness. They ask young peo­ple to be­come en­tre­pre­neurs, but they are not cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment. As a re­sult, many young peo­ple are de­terred from do­ing it.”


Ram­per­sad is con­cerned about busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, as he said con­stant rob­beries in­crease li­a­bil­i­ty for in­sur­ance com­pa­nies. It will al­so in­crease se­cu­ri­ty costs, es­pe­cial­ly since he had to make en­hance­ments af­ter the last rob­bery.

He said the Freeport and Chase Vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties are not the best place to set up new busi­ness­es now, as about five or six stores along the South­ern Main Road closed fol­low­ing rob­beries in the past year.


Store man­ag­er Har­ric­hand Maraj be­lieves there were more than two men in­volved in the crime, as they were throw­ing the tanks over the wall on­to an emp­ty prop­er­ty. He said they al­so re­quired a truck to move 50 tanks. They re­port­ed the rob­bery to Freeport po­lice but in­ves­ti­ga­tors were yet to ar­rest any­one yes­ter­day.

Last April, ban­dits broke the glass and cut locks to en­ter the store, steal­ing items es­ti­mat­ed at $40,000.

Coun­cil­lor Vis­han Mo­hammed said it was one of the few rob­beries in the last cou­ple of months. Mo­hammed said just like scrap iron deal­ers who lost their means of liv­ing when the Gov­ern­ment banned the ex­port of used met­al, some peo­ple are get­ting des­per­ate.

He said it was a con­cern that LPG tanks were now on ban­dits’ radars.
 He urged the pop­u­la­tion to look out for sus­pi­cious peo­ple try­ing to sell LPG tanks and re­port them to the po­lice. He said peo­ple must look out for each oth­er and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, adding he hopes the rise in crime does not de­ter busi­ness­es from con­sid­er­ing Chase Vil­lage for their lo­ca­tion.


“We are def­i­nite­ly see­ing an in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly along the Chase Vil­lage main road. Yes, it is un­usu­al for peo­ple to come and take gas tanks. At this es­tab­lish­ment, it is un­usu­al, and I think it leads to some sort of des­per­a­tion in peo­ple now,” Mo­hammed said.