The seem­ing­ly un­re­lent­ing crime epi­dem­ic re­flect­ed in the 500-plus homi­cide toll for the year to date, vi­o­lent rob­beries and oth­er dis­turb­ing un­to­ward in­ci­dents which con­tin­ue un­abat­ed call for “ur­gent and crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion from the Gov­ern­ment led by the Prime Min­is­ter” and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to bring it un­der con­trol, the T&T Cham­ber says.

And the TTMA is de­scrib­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion as one that is in dire need of at­ten­tion, “as has been the case for some time.”

Crime is al­so forc­ing busi­ness­es to shell out large sums to make cost­ly in­vest­ments in mod­ern se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems and even to pay for ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty guards.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Charles Pash­ley told the Busi­ness Guardian per­pe­tra­tors prey on all, from the per­ceived easy tar­gets such as women with hand­bags and brief­cas­es in ve­hi­cles, to armed home in­va­sions and a va­ri­ety of armed at­tacks on var­i­ous busi­ness­es.

“These at­tacks sti­fle the av­er­age cit­i­zens and neg­a­tive­ly im­pact their free­dom to go about their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties in at­tempt­ing to earn a liv­ing, or con­duct sim­ple ac­tiv­i­ties such as go­ing to work, go­ing to the gro­cery or par­tic­i­pat­ing in night­ly en­ter­tain­ment. Crime im­pacts all the cit­i­zens of the coun­try,” he said.

This, there­fore, he added, has neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions on busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, there­by re­duc­ing for­eign and lo­cal in­vest­ments in ex­pan­sions.

TTMA pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al who shared sim­i­lar con­cerns said, “An en­vi­ron­ment that has a steady in­crease in crime is al­ways go­ing to be re­flec­tive in a cost to the coun­try, ei­ther in the form of ad­di­tion­al spend­ing for se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, loss of valu­able re­source (labour) to mi­gra­tion and loss of lives among many oth­er loss­es. The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor like all oth­ers sec­tors in the coun­try are fac­ing these chal­lenges and are try­ing to cope with the scourge of crime.”

And to safe­guard not on­ly op­er­a­tions but now more im­por­tant­ly life, for­ti­fy­ing one’s premis­es is a ne­ces­si­ty, added Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) Richie Sookhai.

Sookhai said the cost of CCTV cam­eras for in­stance, ini­tial­ly priced at around $5,000 to $6,000, has now dou­bled.

“And as new tech­nol­o­gy comes out busi­ness­es need to up­date equip­ment every two to three years de­pend­ing on the type of sys­tem. So, it’s a con­stant cost busi­ness­es have to in­cur. Crime is erod­ing the bot­tom line,” Sookhai added.

And while there may be some fi­nan­cial re­prieve with the tax break of CCTV cam­eras Sookhai said busi­ness­es re­main cog­nizant of the glob­al fac­tors like short­ages and in­creased ship­ping costs which ul­ti­mate­ly af­fects prices.

Busi­ness­es al­so have to bear ris­ing cost for the hir­ing of se­cu­ri­ty guards.

An un­armed guard de­tailed for a 12 hour shift tal­lies be­tween $450 to $600 while an armed guard racks up around $650 to $1000 for the same num­ber of hours

Sookhai added that some busi­ness­es have al­ready dou­bled their num­ber of guards with the Christ­mas sea­son and the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od close­ly up­on us.

“It’s not just a sit­u­a­tion where there are pick­pock­eters at down­town Ch­agua­nas. There are cer­tain­ly hot spots in Ch­agua­nas, but the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are spread­ing to oth­er parts of Ch­agua­nas and when it comes to se­ri­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty these are be­com­ing more fre­quent,” ac­cord­ing to the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber Pres­i­dent who added crim­i­nals are well-or­gan­ised; of­ten scop­ing out premis­es sev­er­al times be­fore strik­ing.

Sookhai how­ev­er, said Ch­agua­nas re­mains re­silient not­ing there are new play­ers en­ter­ing the mar­ket.

This was echoed by Daran Ba­hadoors­ingh, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Caribbean Hous­ing Ltd, de­vel­op­er of Brent­wood.

He said while se­cu­ri­ty is cost­ly this has not de­terred ten­ants.

“On the res­i­den­tial side every body wants gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties be­cause the crime is­sue is all over the coun­try so all of our de­vel­op­ments are gat­ed.

“On the com­mer­cial side se­cu­ri­ty has to be at a pre­mi­um at all times but it has not ham­pered ten­ants want­i­ng to come in,”Ba­hadoors­ingh said.

Not­ing the cost of se­cu­ri­ty is “an in­cred­i­ble ex­pense,” he said un­for­tu­nate­ly, every one has to bear this.

“We as a de­vel­op­er ob­vi­ous­ly, it would cost us a lot more now be­cause we have to rig the whole place with all these cam­eras and pay for se­cu­ri­ty and no busi­ness will ab­sorb that all on its own.

“This has to be re­flect­ed in rent and ten­ants have to pay those rent and it’s re­flect­ed in prices and the con­sumer has to pay those prices. So, it af­fects every body and it’s a pity we have to deal with this. Imag­ine if we could cut out or min­imise those se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es from our month­ly bud­get how it could trick­le that down to rent to ten­ants and this would be re­flect­ed in their prices,” Ba­hadoors­ingh added.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud how­ev­er, said the se­cu­ri­ty costs have been “more of less the same over the past sev­er­al years be­cause there are on­ly “so many se­cu­ri­ty guards and so many cam­eras that can be ded­i­cat­ed to premis­es.”

As Aboud see it the greater cost re­mains the fear of crime it­self.

“The greater cost is the fear and the anx­i­ety the dan­ger­ous en­vi­ron­ment has cre­at­ed where peo­ple are scared to move around and scared to leave their homes af­ter hours. This has pro­duced a damp­en­ing ef­fect on busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty that is af­fect­ing not on­ly busi­ness­es in towns and cities but al­so hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness­es, movie hous­es and oth­er types of night time ac­tiv­i­ty,” Aboud said.

He main­tained a greater de­gree of con­cern should be paid to try­ing to re­store peo­ple’s sense of con­fi­dence about leav­ing their homes af­ter hours since this fear is one of the greater cost at this time.

And the TTMA said, like oth­er en­ti­ties, it al­so con­tin­ues to work with the re­spec­tive agen­cies to try to com­bat crime, out­lin­ing it is work­ing in ar­eas of il­lic­it trade, gen­der-based vi­o­lence and part­ner­ing with Crime Stop­pers, the Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er au­thor­i­ties.

How­ev­er, it added the coun­try must work col­lec­tive­ly to swift­ly ad­dress the prob­lem of crime.

“If we de­lay fur­ther, we are like­ly to face a greater prob­lem, where, from a busi­ness per­spec­tive, the cost and risk to op­er­ate would like­ly out­weigh gains that can be had from en­gag­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions in the coun­try.

“We need to keep in mind that busi­ness­es are owned and op­er­at­ed by cit­i­zens of this coun­try that face crime is­sues that af­fect our so­ci­ety, out­side of the busi­ness realm,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion said.

“In down­town we have had a very proac­tive re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice, we have en­gaged the po­lice, par­tic­u­lar­ly cen­tral po­lice sta­tion and the city po­lice, and we have been con­stant­ly work­ing with them re­gard­ing pa­trols sched­ules and strate­gies for the city At this time we could say that while there is a de­gree of con­cern we have had the restora­tion of some con­fi­dence with our ac­tive en­gage­ment with the po­lice for down­town Port of Spain. The re­port seem to in­di­cate that 2022 is so far on par with 2021 and we are hop­ing we will be able to build on this and im­prove busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in the city as we head to­wards Christ­mas.” Aboud end­ed.