Businesses are being hurt by crime

Aug 18, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Criminals this past week invaded a private café in the centre of the city. The bandits robbed the customers of their money and personal possessions. This must have been a terrifying experience for those who were robbed. It is best they had gone to a horror movie than to have to endure being robbed in broad daylight.
This is a frightening development because if such a brazen act of criminality could have been conducted in the centre of the capital, then it means that very few places are now safe from possible criminal attacks.
The bandits are getting more brazen with each day. They are doing as they please. Nowhere seems safe anymore. Guyanese cannot continue to live in such an environment. What short of life will people have when you go for a cup of coffee and have to be scared that bandits can come rushing it at any time and rob you.
Where are Guyanese to go with their families if they want to relax? If a café can be attacked, then where else is safe?
A lot of Guyanese use the weekends to take their family to parks and to the seawall. There is no entrance fee there. It is a place in which you can spend some free time with your family in pleasant outdoors without costing a fortune.
A lot of people cannot afford to buy ice cream for their children on weekends. At one location a cone made from foreign ice cream costs as much as $400. Now if you have three children, it will cost you $1200 just to take them for a cone. If they ask for something else, the tab climbs. For this reason many people take their family to seawall. The fresh air is free. Some guys take their girlfriends there rather than spending a fortune at the bars. Most go there because it is clean, healthy relaxation.
Well, even the seawall is no longer safe. It was reported in the media that last week there was an attack on a person in a car, right on the seawall.
More and more Guyanese are going to stay at home if these criminal attacks are not halted. People are asking just where now is safe to go with your family.
The other major implication of last week’s attack is what is going to happen to small businesses in the country by these attacks. It takes a lot of money to establish a business such as the one which was invaded by bandits. Rent has to be paid; equipment purchased, furniture supplied, staff paid, utilities must be catered for. That runs into millions of dollars each month.
Businesses are not doing well at the moment. Owners are finding it difficult to stay out of the red. They are hanging in hoping that things will change. When incidents like these happen, it makes it more difficult for the business. Patrons stay away and the business will not earn enough to even cover salaries of staff. They will eventually be forced to close doors.
When businesses begin to lose money, the tax man suffers. The businesses are not generating profits from which taxes are deducted. They are not employing staff from whom taxes are deducted. They are not buying as much materials on which VAT has to be paid. They will eventually be forced to close and this will mean that no taxes would then be paid.
Crime is affecting business. Many business places are complaining that ever since the prisoners escaped from the Camp Street and Lusignan prisons, persons have not been shopping as they used to. Some persons from rural areas are not venturing into the city to shop.
It is not just, however, the slowdown in business which is problematic. Many businesses are also victims of break-ins. And you cannot rely on the police to catch the thieves. So on the one hand bandits are robbing the business when it is open and when it is closed there is the risk of theft.
Something has to be done to ensure that crime is brought under control. But if the authorities cannot control the prisons, how can they be expected to control crime.

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