The Book­sellers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is lament­ing an uptick in shoplift­ing at book­stores across the coun­try dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion. This is the pe­ri­od that par­ents and guardians pur­chase school books and sup­plies ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“We are quite ac­cus­tomed to shoplift­ing dur­ing this time, it hap­pens every sin­gle year, and be­lieve it or not it’s of­ten the same per­pe­tra­tors who are do­ing it,” Di­rec­tor of the Book­sellers As­so­ci­a­tion Vivek Char­ran ex­plained.

Last Sat­ur­day, a 33-year-old woman was ar­rest­ed while at­tempt­ing to steal $2,150 worth of items from a Port-of-Spain book­store.

Char­ran said this was hap­pen­ing in many book­stores and pic­tures and footage of the shoplifters show that it’s usu­al­ly a group of women com­mit­ting those crimes.

“What they nor­mal­ly do is they move in a group, so more of­ten it’s a group of women and they move around and they shop while some­body is out­side in a car wait­ing for them,” he said.

Char­ran, who is al­so the chair­man of Char­ran’s Book­store, re­vealed that some­times men ac­com­pa­ny the women to shoplift.

“Some­times they have a man with them or two men with them. What al­so hap­pens is that the men cre­ate a dis­tur­bance in the store by cre­at­ing con­flict and when that hap­pens all the at­ten­tion and the se­cu­ri­ty are di­vert­ed to the men and then the women do the shoplift­ing,” he ex­plained.

Char­ran said while peo­ple may be­lieve that the shoplifters were do­ing so be­cause they could not af­ford to pur­chase the items for their chil­dren, that is not the case. He said the thieves sell the books in their com­mu­ni­ty or to ven­dors.

“What is of­ten stolen is much more than what is on a book­list. They don’t of­ten come with one book­list, they come with four, five book­lists,” he said.

But even with that in­for­ma­tion, Char­ran said, if the shoplifters are caught they are not pros­e­cut­ed be­cause the own­ers don’t press charges. He said the ma­jor­i­ty of the time the per­pe­tra­tors are not even caught.

“We take the goods and we of­ten let them go. Pros­e­cut­ing the peo­ple means that the items need to be con­fis­cat­ed by the po­lice, a re­port needs to be made and then you have to go to court when the case is called,” he said.

Ear­li­er this month, Shock’N Stock Book­sellers and Sta­tion­ers held two women steal­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 text­books val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2,500.

Char­ran said CCTV cam­eras work as a de­ter­rent along with plain­clothes se­cu­ri­ty guards.

How­ev­er, Char­ran said those who can­not af­ford to pur­chase books for their chil­dren are as­sist­ed by book­stores.

“If you find­ing it dif­fi­cult to af­ford the book­list, well if you go to the teach­ers or prin­ci­pals of the school, the teach­ers or the prin­ci­pal of the school will then ver­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion and they will reach out to book­sellers in their area through the PTA,” Char­ran shared.

Book grants on the way

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Wal­ter Stew­art said while he un­der­stands the fi­nan­cial con­straints faced by some par­ents, he con­demned the women for steal­ing.

He said that those who le­git­i­mate­ly can­not af­ford to buy school sup­plies for their chil­dren can ap­ply for the book grant. He said he in­tends to speak with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cials for an up­date on the $1000 book grant.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants for the book grants have been no­ti­fied and pay­ment will be­gin as soon as pos­si­ble.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Mar­tin Lum Kin al­so con­demned shoplifters. He en­cour­aged par­ents to seek as­sis­tance with­in the con­fines of the laws.

“The per­pe­tra­tor of the al­leged theft of school books does not send a good mes­sage to the youth of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.