Joshua Seemu­n­gal

For­mer pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Ja­son Roach is call­ing for more street pa­trols by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the day and night.

“This is what is go­ing to make us feel safe, the ban­dits, the ki­net­ic move­ments of the po­lice…And it’s not just mur­der. This has to do with van­dal­ism, rob­bing on the streets, and rob­bing pedes­tri­ans. You know, it’s just a wild, wild west. We need to see more vis­i­bil­i­ty from the po­lice on the street,” Roach said.

His call fol­lows the Fri­day night killing of Chi­nese busi­ness­man Bing Zhu Zhang, 49, at his gro­cery in the area.

 Roach said with height­ened busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in San Juan, crim­i­nals are look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Roach, who served as the pres­i­dent of the San Juan busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tion for 18 months, va­cat­ed the post last No­vem­ber. The as­so­ci­a­tion is in the process of ap­point­ing a new pres­i­dent.

Downtown Owners and Merchants Association president Gregory Aboud

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud, al­so com­ment­ing on Zhang’s death, said it was clear and con­cern­ing that Chi­nese busi­ness­men are be­ing specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

Say­ing that he read with great con­cern about the mur­der and rob­bery of Zhang on Fri­day, the Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man not­ed that at­tacks on Chi­nese busi­ness­men are well known to po­lice, mem­bers of the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty and the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“Chi­nese busi­ness­peo­ple are be­ing specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed for rea­sons which are not com­plete­ly un­der­stood but sta­tis­ti­cal­ly it is well recog­nised. The fact is that the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a sea­son of un­prece­dent­ed crime, and it is in­cum­bent up­on us to re­main res­olute and to be or­gan­ised in a way to de­fend our­selves and pro­tect our busi­ness­es, our staff, and our fam­i­lies.

“It is a con­cern for the tens of thou­sands of busi­ness­peo­ple who must go to their premis­es each day that they are at greater and greater risk as time pro­gress­es. And 2023 seems to be on its way to beat­ing all records with re­spect to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Aboud said yes­ter­day.

The busi­ness­man said while much has been made about what can be done to im­prove the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing ap­peals for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, more fo­cus needs to be placed on the causal­i­ties.

Hon­est in­tro­spec­tion is re­quired to make any mean­ing­ful progress, he sug­gest­ed.

“It may be rather hyp­o­crit­i­cal of us to re­quest the in­ter­ven­tion of high­er be­ings and the im­po­si­tion of di­vin­i­ty in­to our na­tion­al af­fairs if we, our­selves, are not be­ing as true as we should be to the caus­es and not be­ing as true as we should be to the cause of jus­tice and the cause of fair­ness and the cause of eq­ui­ty in all of our dai­ly lives.

“This is, of course, com­plete­ly out­side of the ac­tiv­i­ties of those who seek to use vi­o­lence and weapons to harm and rob in­no­cent peo­ple and to take re­venge against those that they feel hurt by, as in the case of the thou­sands of mur­ders that have oc­curred. But this is to say that each of us in our dai­ly lives, in­clud­ing many of us who are vest­ed with au­thor­i­ty and con­trol over the lives of oth­ers, need to con­sid­er greater fair­ness and greater eq­ui­ty in our deal­ings if we want to re­quest di­vine in­ter­ven­tion in our na­tion­al af­fairs,” he said.

President of the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce Baldath Maharaj

Roberto Codallo

Al­so ex­press­ing con­cern about the im­pact of crime on busi­ness­es and the coun­try at large was the Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Bal­dath Ma­haraj.

He said the cham­ber was very con­cerned that the au­thor­i­ties do not ap­pear to have all the nec­es­sary re­sources to deal with crim­i­nals.

He said, as a coun­try, we tend to wait un­til there is a cri­sis to act, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to deal with com­plex is­sues.

“With the up­surge in school vi­o­lence, we are see­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of crim­i­nals and in most cas­es, they are sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion of­fend­ers. They are, there­fore, more dif­fi­cult to stop main­ly be­cause some of them were born in­to a life of crime and this type of be­hav­iour ap­pears nor­mal to them.

“The Cham­ber al­so wants to call on the au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the ac­tiv­i­ties in some so­cial me­dia sites where the lo­ca­tion and ac­tiv­i­ties of po­lice and li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty are shared to warn po­ten­tial crim­i­nals, so they can es­cape the net.

“We al­so saw a pub­li­ca­tion that the po­lice would be on the look­out for stolen ve­hi­cles etc over this East­er hol­i­days. This in­for­ma­tion along with their strate­gies should not be made pub­lic,” Ma­haraj said.

Ac­cord­ing to the busi­ness­man, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in crime in Ch­agua­nas over the years.

He said with the rapid de­vel­op­ment of the busi­ness sec­tor in Ch­agua­nas, more crim­i­nals have been drawn to the area.

As a re­sult, Ma­haraj said, busi­ness­men have been forced to in­vest more mon­ey in se­cu­ri­ty for them­selves, their busi­ness­es, and their fam­i­lies.