Hotel and tourism retail sectors fraught with incidences of employee theft are believed to be contributing factors in food and beverage costs for Nassau being an astonishingly 183 percent above North American hotels.
Stealing is a very serious problem in the Bahamian workplace, Leslie Miller, Minister of Trade and Industry told the Guardian in an interview on Friday. And it makes the cost of doing business in the Bahamas very high. "I would say it is the number one problem that affects the success or failure of the retail sector today and how you overcome it only God knows."
Stealing time on the job was also included in Mr. Miller's definition of stealing. He said that some workers do not want to put in the time that they are paid for. "I think it is an attitudinal problem which we need to address," he said. "The attitude is I work here so the stuff belongs to me anyway."
It is a problems that confronts everyone, Mr. Miller said, and workers need to realize that when the business goes under, his or her job goes under.
Bahamians must develop a different mindset or they will be taken over by foreign workers, he said, suggesting that, "There needs to be an abatement of the average blue-collar worker who believes they are doing the employer a favour by coming to work."
Brian Nutt, President of the Bahamas Employers Confederation shared his personal experience with the Guardian about a situation that occurred while his family owned Gladstone Farms.
The business was experiencing shrinkage in inventory, he said, which prompted an investigation that lasted three months.
The investigation revealed that a ring of about 12 employees, including management personnel, were siphoning off approximately $25,000 a month in inventory. A sting was set up and it resulted in the arrests of several persons from several levels within the company.
The company spent a considerable amount of time with the prosecutor in the court system in an effort to bring the perpetrators to justice, Mr. Nutt said, but the case was eventually dismissed. "It was discovered a few days later that the receiver of the stolen goods was a relative of the prosecutor," he said.
"Trying to bring justice to that type of situation does not pay off and is not worth it," Mr. Nutt concluded in disgust.
Nowadays, most employers who find incidences of theft will call the police but they will not spend the time or money to put suspected persons behind bars. They want to protect their business, he said, and most of the time they simply let the employee resign. The unfortunate result is that such persons then repeat their dishonest practices elsewhere.
Employers do not have a choice, the former poultry farm executive said. They cannot afford to spend money to investigate such matters when the strong possibility exists that somewhere along the line the case may be derailed before it can reach the courts.
"That just comes back to the fact that we live on a small island and everybody is related to everybody," Mr. Nutt said. "Our system of law enforcement regarding criminal activities, especially theft, has a whole line of yes-and-no's that have to occur. And anytime there is a no, the person is released and there are no ramifications from it."
Bahamians need to examine whether or not there are parts of Bahamian culture that are detrimental to the country as a whole, he said, and, "If so we need to redefine that portion of our culture."
"One of the major things is really recognizing that protection of individuals who are harming society should not be done," he said. "Employee theft harms society in that it raises the cost of living for every Bahamian. We have to pay for that theft."
By Martella Matthews, The Nassau Guardian
