Latest update November 29th, 2024 1:00 AM
Store owners upset over Commander Merai’s comments
Keri Boucher (left) and Rhonda Blair
NEW AMSTERDAM, BERBICE – The owners of the Stretch ‘D’ Dollar Store in Pitt Street, New Amsterdam, have expressed their displeasure over recent comments by a senior police official.
Commander of ‘B’ Division, Assistant Commissioner Steve Merai, had described the entity’s owner as a cheapskate who acted in a manner that invited bandits.
Merai was referring to the incident in which an employee of the store, Keri Boucher, was attacked by two men who attempted to rob her of the money she was taking to the bank.
The two suspected bandits – 24-year old Dellon Holder of North Ruimveldt and 21-year old Dexter Gibson of Charlestown and North Ruimveldt — appeared before Magistrate Adele Nagamootoo last Tuesday and were remanded until December 24.
Commander Merai said this incident should never have happened.
“This is a cheap businessman. He should have been more security conscious. He just used a staff to walk down the road with cash, about $200,000, to go to the bank. He could have lost everything. She could have been fatally wounded.”
The proprietor Rudolph Blair, commenting on Merai’s comments, said, “They can say whatever they want to say. I can’t stop them. They ain’t wearing the shoes.”
Yesterday, the man’s wife Rhonda Blair, said that it is unfair for the Commander to call her husband a cheapskate masquerading as a businessman.
“We have been in business for the past 12 years. Paying a taxi fare ($300) to take a staff to the bank is not a problem.”
According to her, after they were robbed in 2005, they contracted the GEB to protect their home and business concerns.
“What he said wasn’t wrong but he could have used better words.”
She explained that her husband makes the daily deposit but on the day in question he was not available. “It was not a large amount of money so we thought it was best to ask the staff to do it. I consider in excess of $500,000 a large amount.”
The Commander’s statements, she said, would result in no financial assistance for the Guyana Police Force. “Once he is the Commander, the door is closed. We would not be doing anything for the police,” Mr. Blair said.
“That is not the way you repay people who have been very kind to you. To make a statement like that— calling us cheap is not fair. I feel really bad. I am hurt. We have been giving so much to the Guyana Police Force.”
“We started to rehabilitate the police boxing gym. Work started but we not finished. We doing the toilet facilities and the changing room.
We doing the entire thing. When the Felix Austin College at Adventure was being rehabilitated, we give a lot.”
They said each year they have been giving funds for the anniversary celebration of the Guyana Police Force. “Recently they had to get passage for some police athletes to go to Georgetown. Them at Central Police Station ask me and I give. Any bar-b-que, any function they ask, we give.”
Keri Boucher, a 23-year old of 39 Stanleytown, New Amsterdam, stated she was not physically beaten by the bandits. “No Ma’am. The bandits did not beat me. He squeezed my arm and kept pulling the bag. I had just a slight pain on the spot he squeezed.”
Yesterday Commander Merai said that he was standing by his previous statements. Lax security on the part of some businessmen is a generally sore point to police.
The Commander believes that Berbicians generally take things for granted and business operatives need to be more security conscious.
Merai also indicated that Division ‘B’ is willing to offer protection to all business entities that need to transport large amounts of cash. He said just make a request and protection would come free of cost.
“Once we are available and the vehicle is not on call we will let the anti-crime vehicle follow them to assist to escort them. It all embodies our area of operation. We don’t want to know what they are taking to the bank. We would just shadow them to the bank, that’s all.”
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