Local merchants may be writing off as much as ten percent in annual profits because of in-store rip-offs by their employees, according to the President of the Bahamas Employers Confederation Brian Nutt, who is calling for a resolution to the crisis.
For businesses struggling to meet payrolls, subjected to the costly provisions of labour legislation and battling low employee productivity, thousands of dollars lost through pilferage is something that they can ill afford.
“It is bad. It’s a serious problem, something that needs to be reckoned with and we need to realize that it costs all of us,” said Mr. Nutt. “Everyone who goes to any store to buy any product is paying for the items that have been stolen.”
“It has been an ongoing crisis and it has been something that businesses have had to face and it has escalated our costs.”
There are no hard and fast collective figures to pinpoint to the exact extent of the problem, but Mr. Nutt said the business consequences have been costly.
It is an assessment that Livingstone Armbrister, Super Value store manager, agrees with. The Golden Gates food store has had to install surveillance cameras and hire a security guard to match shoppers’ receipts with their goods because of employee and customer theft over the years.
But by far, he said, inside jobs are costing the store in profits.
“Sometimes, staff members are the biggest thieves. They steal more than the customers,” Mr. Armbrister said. “You could trust them to an extent, but then again you have to put certain things in place to try to control it.”
“Right now there’s a stock shortage of up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But other stores are losing $200,000 to $300,000,” he said.
According to merchants, everything from grocery products to clothing items are being clandestinely hauled away. But there are other ways that workers are getting over on the system.
Cashiers, for instance, giving breaks to their friends and family members, are slashing significant sums off bills at the register, other store managers say.
And prosecuting the offenders to discourage similar violations may be easier said than done.
“We (Super Value) went to the extent of prosecuting some persons, but going back and forth to court was such a hassle. In store theft is such a big problem that some stores go out of business,” Mr. Armbrister said.
It’s the latest in a series of issues plaguing the business sector. A series of surveys conducted recently by a coalition of private sector organizations show that low productivity and the recently enacted labour laws are having adverse effects on business profits.
According to one of the studies, the greatest fear is not that the current level of productivity will keep the economy from growing, but that it will cause it to slide downwards. It cautioned that the vices were likely to impact the Bahamas’ long term economic and social stability.
“It is a diabolical, self perpetuating monster that has been created by us looking the other way or just sweeping the problem under the carpet and not dealing with it,” said Mr. Nutt. “We have to start to deal with the major issues that are affecting us, that are affecting our ability to compete in the marketplace, that are affecting our productivity.”
