Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been forced to spend mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly to im­ple­ment se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect their op­er­a­tions as the crime wave con­tin­ues to spi­ral.

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett told the Sun­day Guardian that if one were to in­clude big com­pa­nies and medi­um and small busi­ness­es which use sur­veil­lance sys­tems, cam­era sys­tems, se­cu­ri­ty guards and phys­i­cal up­grades like bur­glar proofs and walls, this would run in­to mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly.

Bartlett, who al­so owns a phar­ma­cy, said that as the crime sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened, the cost of pro­tect­ing busi­ness­es in­creased con­sid­er­ably over the last five years.

Three peo­ple were in­jured, and one died af­ter a shoot­ing at the Res­i­dence night­club at One Wood­brook Place, West­ern Main Road, last week­end.

Po­lice said a gun­man who was sit­ting in a car walked to­wards the night­club wear­ing a hood­ie and a ban­dan­na around his face and climbed up in the cor­ner of the wall and opened fire on the men, who were sit­ting in­side the cor­ner ca­bana. The gun­man then ran to a near­by car and fled the scene. With­in sec­onds of the brazen shoot­ing, sev­er­al pa­trons who were sit­ting and stand­ing near­by scam­pered for cov­er.

In Feb­ru­ary, ban­dits broke in­to a jew­el­ry store in San Fer­nan­do in broad day­light, killing a Venezue­lan se­cu­ri­ty guard.

In 2021, ban­dits ham­mered their way in­to an RBC Mar­aval branch ATM and got away with $1.3 mil­lion.

These are just some ex­am­ples of brazen at­tacks that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has suf­fered as the crime wave sweep­ing the na­tion has in­ten­si­fied.

Daphne Bartlett, president, San Fernando Business Association.

Rishi Ragoonath

San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion

Ac­cord­ing to Bartlett, "These days, to in­stall or in­crease your CCTV cam­era sys­tem or hire armed se­cu­ri­ty guards is cost­ly. All this is an at­tempt to pro­tect the busi­ness own­er and the staff. To in­stall the cheap­est CCTV sys­tem for a small store starts at $6,000. It makes no sense to hire an un­armed guard in these times, so you must hire an armed guard, and that can cost $200 per hour.

"Crime al­so puts men­tal strain on the busi­ness own­er. This af­fects the cost of your bud­get for health be­cause if peo­ple don’t know, there are six drugs on the CDAP pro­gramme which are free for men­tal ill­ness in T&T. Men­tal stress is com­mon in T&T be­cause of the so­cial and crime prob­lems. So busi­ness own­ers are spend­ing more on med­i­cine for men­tal health. Ex­am­ples of the (oth­er) stress-re­lat­ed drugs are Zoloft and Pax­il. Peo­ple pay $497 for 14 of the Zoloft tablets."

She said that the cost of im­ple­ment­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures must be stacked against the oth­er tra­di­tion­al costs of do­ing busi­ness.

"When you look at the cost of se­cu­ri­ty and your sale fig­ures are de­clin­ing be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the high cost of liv­ing, a busi­ness own­er can­not af­ford armed se­cu­ri­ty. Busi­ness own­ers have to pay staff, pay rent and oth­er over­head costs. The on­ly ones I’m see­ing with armed se­cu­ri­ty with AK-47s are the Chi­nese gro­ceries."

She ques­tioned whether the coun­try needs a state of emer­gency.

"There must be law and or­der or else peo­ple will close their busi­ness­es and leave. Peo­ple are hun­gry and will do any­thing else to get a dol­lar in their pock­ets to buy food."

Members of the public walk past police officers on patrol at the corner of Queen Janelle Commissiong and Frederick streets, Port-of-Spain, earlier this year.

ANISTO ALVES

 Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers

Co-or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Jai Lelad­hars­ingh said, mean­while, that over the last five years, in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es have seen a close to 30 per cent in­crease in the cost of do­ing busi­ness by hav­ing to in­vest in ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect their op­er­a­tions.

"Hir­ing armed se­cu­ri­ty is very ex­pen­sive. Sur­veil­lance at night is al­so very im­por­tant. In some busi­ness­es, the crim­i­nals are com­ing through the roof and let­ting them­selves in­to the build­ing. To hire armed se­cu­ri­ty could cost over $500 an hour. As for in­stalling a cam­era sys­tem, it can cost as lit­tle as $5,000 to as much as $30,000."

He al­so said that in­vest­ing more mon­ey in se­cu­ri­ty for busi­ness­es has forced busi­ness own­ers to pass the cost on to the con­sumers.

"The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem can push up the prices of what is sold to con­sumers. When the prices are high, sales go down, as it is an elas­tic type of re­la­tion­ship. That’s im­pact­ing busi­ness neg­a­tive­ly. So we have to keep peo­ple em­ployed, pay off ex­or­bi­tant debts and meet our com­mit­ments to the banks."

He said that the Con­fed­er­a­tion has de­cid­ed to be a good cor­po­rate play­er and will help with the train­ing of T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) of­fi­cers in Sep­tem­ber.

"While oth­er sec­tors of the pri­vate sec­tor have been giv­ing fi­nan­cial do­na­tions to re­pair ve­hi­cles and oth­er types of as­sis­tance, the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Cham­bers is of­fer­ing train­ing to the TTPS in the soft skills de­part­ment to help with lead­er­ship is­sues, in­ter­fac­ing with the pub­lic, the is­sue of re­struc­tur­ing the Hu­man Re­source de­part­ment as well as oth­er is­sues, so we could man­age the tal­ent in the TTPS. We are do­ing it pro bono as it’s a ser­vice to the coun­try."

Satesh Moonasar, president of the Barkeepers and Operators Association of Trinidad and Tobago.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion

Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) Satesh Moonasar told the Sun­day Guardian that it is be­com­ing more cost­ly for busi­ness­es to pro­tect them­selves from the crim­i­nals, who are be­com­ing bold­er in their ac­tiv­i­ties.

"Crime is a prob­lem for all busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly bars be­cause of the na­ture of the busi­ness and the late hours that bars op­er­ate. This is some­thing that has plagued our busi­ness­es for some time. Re­cent­ly, with the crime up­surge, it has be­come very dif­fi­cult. De­spite the eco­nom­ic con­straints that we face, we are try­ing to put mea­sures in place to pro­tect our­selves and our cus­tomers."

Based on their size and lo­ca­tion, he said, bars are tak­ing dif­fer­ent mea­sures, but the "costs are heavy".

"There has been in­creased se­cu­ri­ty at the door. There have been more met­al de­tec­tors at the check in’s. There has been more se­cu­ri­ty in the car park. To hire a se­cu­ri­ty with a met­al de­tec­tor for a shift, could cost be­tween $500 to $1,000 for one se­cu­ri­ty guard. It de­pends on if it is armed or un­armed se­cu­ri­ty."

He gave the ex­am­ple of buy­ing and in­stalling cam­eras, which he said is even more ex­pen­sive.

"We en­cour­age all mem­bers to put cam­eras in their es­tab­lish­ments. But this can on­ly go so far, as cam­eras are not re­al­ly for pro­tec­tion. It is to re­view af­ter the crime has oc­curred. Yes, it works as a de­ter­rent. My bar which is lo­cat­ed in Cal­i­for­nia is medi­um-sized and I have 32 cam­eras on the com­pound. That cost me al­most $30,000."

He called on the po­lice to take ac­tion, as he said bars and oth­er busi­ness­es that op­er­ate at night are be­com­ing tar­gets.

He al­so asked the au­thor­i­ties to make it eas­i­er for busi­ness own­ers to get firearms li­cences eas­i­er

"This crime sit­u­a­tion tends to spike when the coun­try faces a tough eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. But some­thing has to be done.  How­ev­er, we are not see­ing any­thing be­ing done. When a busi­ness own­er ap­plies for a firearm li­cence and goes through the en­tire pro­ce­dure, our ap­pli­ca­tions could take years. So ba­si­cal­ly they are tak­ing away your right to de­fend your­self."

T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce

 In a state­ment to the Sun­day Guardian, The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce did not give any num­bers or sta­tis­tics but stat­ed that as the crime sit­u­a­tion wors­ens it will con­tin­ue to af­fect all stake­hold­ers in so­ci­ety.

The T&T Cham­ber called on the Gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion.

"Those in au­thor­i­ty need to ur­gent­ly ad­dress the re­cent spate of heinous crime and as­cer­tain what re­sources are need­ed to take cor­rec­tive and im­me­di­ate ac­tion, as well as what are long-term so­lu­tions to be im­ple­ment­ed.

"We urge cit­i­zens to prac­tice per­son­al safe­ty and we ask our mem­bers to take all pre­cau­tions to pro­tect their em­ploy­ees and busi­ness­es. We al­so en­cour­age every­one to con­tact Crime Stop­pers or pro­vide use­ful in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice where pos­si­ble." The cham­ber said, "Crime af­fects all fam­i­lies and all busi­ness­es, re­gard­less of ge­o­graph­ic area. It di­min­ish­es the qual­i­ty of life we all want as cit­i­zens. The fact that there is dis­re­gard for hu­man life and the homi­cide rate is es­ca­lat­ing is in­dica­tive that we are on a down­ward spi­ral. Crime is a con­cern for every­one and we all must be vig­i­lant. Liv­ing in fear is not what any of us want."

The Res­i­dence

The Res­i­dence man­age­ment, re­spond­ing to how the lat­est in­ci­dent has af­fect­ed its op­er­a­tions and what is be­ing done to pro­tect em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers, stat­ed, "Se­cu­ri­ty costs in our in­dus­try con­tin­ue to in­crease as we con­tin­ue to pro­vide the safest en­vi­ron­ment for our cus­tomers and staff. The safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our pa­trons and staff have al­ways been and con­tin­ue to be our top pri­or­i­ty. We will con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant and part­ner with our key stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and the liveli­hoods of our staff."