–heist affects old age, NIS and public assistance payments

A security guard was injured as two bandits reportedly carrying firearms robbed the Guyana Post Office Cooperation Training Centre yesterday morning shortly after the facility was opened to members of the public.

Information reaching the Guyana Chronicle suggested that one of the men earlier visited the post office located at Lamaha and Carmichael Streets and later returned with an accomplice to carry out the act.
When this publication visited the scene yesterday, the doors and gate of the facility were locked as investigators carried out their investigation; security officers from the main branch of the post office were also sent over to the facility.
There was blood on a window which confirmed that someone had been injured. Persons close to the investigation stated that a security officer was pistol-whipped by one of the bandits. While the post office public relations department did not get into the details of the robbery , this newspaper was reliably informed that the monies which amounted to an initial five million based on an auditors ‘ report, represented payment for old- age pensions, public assistance and National Insurance Scheme pensions.
During our visit yesterday, a pensioner who said that she visited the facility on Monday to transact business reported that the way the monies at the facility are kept leaves much to be desired. The woman who spoke with media operatives said that when she walked into the post office she noticed brand new currency just lying on the counter at the post office.
She then jokingly remarked: “ I myself wanted to snatch some and run out the place.” Another gentleman who also visited the same post office the very day that the pensioner visited and spoke to this publication later in the day, also had a story similar to that of the senior citizen.
The man said that he had presented a voucher to the cashier at the facility and when she collected the voucher, she turned her back to whatever needed to be done with the voucher leaving the money exposed and easy to access by any one on the other side of the counter. The facility is not equipped with close circuit television cameras.
Contacted late yesterday afternoon, Minister of Human Services and Social Security Jennifer Webster related that she was very disturbed at the frequency with which post offices are being robbed of public funds and called for there to be better security arrangements that will bolster security for public funds and for the persons who visit the post offices to uplift the various payments.
The minister added that with what is happening in the society today, greater attention to security should always be a primary objective. She said that such actions of criminal minds deny persons who are genuinely in need of the monies their assistance and reiterated that the practice which is worrisome must stop.
Meanwhile as usual, the post office corporation said that it would revisit the security arrangements to prevent a recurrence of yesterday’s unfortunate development. Yesterday’s robbery takes the number of reported post office robberies for the year to three. Earlier this year there were robberies at the Soesdyke and Campbellville post offices.

(By Leroy Smith)