Crime in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal city has been on the in­crease. The is­sue came in­to sharp fo­cus when 62-year-old Mar­a­lyn Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son, the hold­er of dual cit­i­zen­ship for T&T and Amer­i­ca, was robbed of $170,000 in cash on Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street, Port-of-Spain, af­ter be­ing beat­en by ban­dits on Oc­to­ber 6. She had with­drawn $65,000 (TT) from a bank on In­de­pen­dence Square and was car­ry­ing an ad­di­tion­al US$15,000 to re­pair her home in To­co. The in­ci­dent was cap­tured on cam­era and went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia.

Hours be­fore Cal­len­der-Mor­ri­son’s rob­bery, a Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble at­tached to the Vic­tim Sup­port Unit in To­ba­go had a gold chain val­ued at $8,000 snatched from her neck while walk­ing along In­de­pen­dence Square.

But what is the cost to busi­ness­es to re­main open in such cir­cum­stances?

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties is crip­pling busi­ness­es in T&T, with op­er­a­tors forced to spend mil­lions of dol­lars on se­cu­ri­ty.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) alone, rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness own­ers from Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons, spends $10 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to pro­tect their lives, earn­ings, goods and premis­es. DO­MA pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud told the Sun­day Guardian the mon­ey comes from the pock­ets of scores of busi­ness own­ers op­er­at­ing with­in the city lim­its.

He said he has been plead­ing for months for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of busi­ness­es in Port-of-Spain to be made a pri­or­i­ty as a well-or­gan­ised group of crim­i­nals op­er­at­ing in the cap­i­tal city have been in­still­ing fear in cit­i­zens. Known by scores of busi­ness own­ers and ven­dors, the crim­i­nals have been net­work­ing to avoid be­ing caught by the po­lice. Some of these crim­i­nals al­so use school­child­ren.

His com­ments came on the heels of an up­surge in brazen day­light rob­beries in the city which has left shop­pers, ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers un­easy as they car­ry out their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties.

The busi­ness op­er­a­tors, who view their safe­ty as a top pri­or­i­ty, have been putting out their mon­ey.

Break­ing down the spend on se­cu­ri­ty, Aboud said a large por­tion of the mon­ey is ex­pend­ed on day­time guard ser­vices, alarm sys­tems, alarm mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems and guard re­sponse ser­vices.

“A ma­jor com­po­nent of se­cu­ri­ty turned out to be cash-in-tran­sit ser­vices which is an armed couri­er that will come to your premis­es to col­lect sales and take it and de­posit it to the bank,” he said.

Based on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived in those cat­e­gories, Aboud dis­closed, “It is our es­ti­mate that the an­nu­al ad­di­tion­al cost of se­cu­ri­ty in the city of Port-of-Spain is in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion per an­num. It be­comes very im­por­tant to un­der­stand that most of this is fo­cused on pro­tec­tion of the premis­es of the busi­ness peo­ple and pro­tec­tion dur­ing the night-time hours.”

How­ev­er, he said, “There is no bud­get in there for pro­tec­tion of the day­time shop­pers and per­sons us­ing the streets of Port-of-Spain.”

Asked if the cost to se­cure their busi­ness­es has be­come bur­den­some, Aboud said the over­all cost of se­cu­ri­ty was not on­ly to be mea­sured by the ex­pen­di­ture on se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures but al­so as an op­por­tu­ni­ty cost.

“Many great op­por­tu­ni­ties are be­ing lost be­cause the grave se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion is ex­treme­ly dis­cour­ag­ing to in­vest­ment and dis­cour­ag­ing to ex­pan­sion,” he added.

Aboud point­ed out that the cost of se­cu­ri­ty has fi­nan­cial and non-fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions.

The non-fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions, he said, are more detri­men­tal to the fu­ture of our coun­try in the sense of lost in­vest­ments and ex­pan­sions, “and lost hope”.

Se­cu­ri­ty costs in­crease around the coun­try

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, the pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett ad­mit­ted the cost of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty is sub­stan­tial for busi­ness op­er­a­tors in the south­ern city.

“With the in­crease in crime, busi­ness­es had to beef up se­cu­ri­ty. They had to put in more CCTV cam­eras. Oth­ers have al­so up­grad­ed their se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras.”

She said some busi­ness own­ers have been re­tain­ing armed se­cu­ri­ty guards to es­cort them from their busi­ness­es to their homes and vice ver­sa.

“Many busi­ness own­ers are hir­ing se­cu­ri­ty guards in their homes be­cause they are scared of home in­va­sions. It has now be­come over­bear­ing.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion has a mem­ber­ship of 50 busi­ness­es.

Giv­ing a rough cal­cu­la­tion of how much the south busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty spends on se­cu­ri­ty each year, Bartlett said, “We av­er­age about $6 to $7 mil­lion.”

Bartlett said the Gov­ern­ment was not do­ing enough to as­sist mi­cro busi­ness­es.

“We are be­ing crip­pled all around.”

She al­so point­ed out that if there were reg­u­lar joint army/po­lice pa­trols in the city, busi­ness op­er­a­tors would not have to spend ex­or­bi­tant fees on se­cu­ri­ty.

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Vivek Char­ran said busi­ness own­ers have been in­vest­ing in high-de­f­i­n­i­tion cam­eras in their stores.

High-qual­i­ty footage from these cam­eras, he said, can be used as ev­i­dence in court.

The cost to in­stall six high-de­f­i­n­i­tion cam­eras with DVRs can be be­tween $12,000 to $15,000. He al­so stat­ed that a small busi­ness­man can fork out as much as $10,000 for a ba­sic se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer per month.

“If you are look­ing for an armed se­cu­ri­ty guard it would be dou­ble that cost.”

When the min­i­mum wage of $20.50 goes in­to ef­fect next Jan­u­ary, Char­ran said he ex­pects a high­er se­cu­ri­ty cost for busi­ness own­ers.

Aboud of­fers some so­lu­tions

With this in mind, Aboud said DO­MA would be ask­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­sid­er giv­ing them an al­lowance from the prop­er­ty tax.

“So if the Fi­nance Min­is­ter col­lects $100 in prop­er­ty tax in Port-of-Spain, please give us back $30 or $40 out of that $100 for us to man­age a se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice on the streets of Port-of-Spain and re­lieve the po­lice of the bur­den that they are fac­ing with the num­ber of streets they have to pa­trol,” he said.

He al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to al­low the down­town busi­ness own­ers to im­ple­ment a Busi­ness Im­prove­ment Dis­tricts (BIDs) con­cept in which a por­tion of tax­es col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment is used by stake­hold­ers to pro­tect them­selves.

This mod­el, Aboud said, was tried and test­ed and has been suc­cess­ful in New York and sev­er­al cities in Amer­i­ca.

He said DO­MA would take con­trol of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict un­der the BIDs sys­tem with funds raised from prop­er­ty tax.

“So, in essence, the busi­ness peo­ple would be pay­ing for their own se­cu­ri­ty.”

In­stead of beg­ging a busi­ness­man to con­tribute to a pri­vate fund, Aboud said the State has the pow­er to col­lect the funds and turn them over to stake­hold­ers to be used to pro­tect them­selves and the city of Port-of-Spain.

“We are re­fus­ing to ad­mit de­feat ... we are re­fus­ing to throw in the tow­el ... we are re­fus­ing to give up hope,” Aboud said as he called on Im­bert and the Gov­ern­ment to se­ri­ous­ly em­pow­er them.

In­sist­ing that crim­i­nals are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the law­less­ness that ex­ists, Aboud said they have to make an ef­fort to be in­no­v­a­tive and dy­nam­ic.

On ex­tor­tion

Asked if crim­i­nals have been ex­tort­ing mon­ey from se­lect­ed Port-of-Spain busi­ness own­ers, Aboud said he re­ceived two such re­ports a few months ago which he could not ver­i­fy.

“I don’t know if they could be char­ac­terised as pet­ty or se­ri­ous based on the in­for­ma­tion that we have. The fig­ures were not told to me. The per­sons in­volved in­di­cat­ed that they were threat­ened and would be robbed if they did not pay. We ad­vised that no pay­ment should be made and the mat­ter re­port­ed to the po­lice.”

The po­lice, he said, in­ter­vened in the mat­ter.

“Ex­tor­tion is a very se­ri­ous threat to busi­ness ... that is one of the prin­ci­pal el­e­ments of de­struc­tion of busi­ness en­ter­pris­es and no­body is pre­pared to deal with that,” Aboud added.

The State, he said, should have a spe­cial unit to deal with such threats.