A MAN’S OWN TO KEEP

Kaieteur News – A man gets up early. He quickly does his sanitary rituals, has his breakfast, kisses his family goodbye and sets off to work.

He has his problems but he does not burden the world with them. He wants to work hard and honestly so that he can provide for his family. His family is important to him and even though he may be barely making ends meet and just only covering the bills, he knows that day in day out, he has to rise for work so that he can take care of his family.

Over time, he may have accumulated some assets. He may have over time been able to buy a car or some piece of expensive jewellery through his hard work. That is a product of his labour. They belong to him and not to any other. He should be entitled to those things.

Yet while this man is busy making his daily bread, there are others who are plotting to deprive him of what he has worked for. They will try to either rob him or steal his assets. Some even go as far as plotting to extort money from the poor fellow.

These criminals are not interested in making an honest living. They are interested in taking what others have worked hard for. Sometimes, what a poor man has, takes many years to accumulate and therefore he deserves to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

The criminals who deprive other people of their hard-earned savings and assets deserve no mercy. They should feel the full brunt of the law. Many of these criminals when they are caught, attempt to cover their faces so that they would not be shamed in public.

But have they ever considered what they have done to those whom they rob? Among the many victims, of carjackings, for example, are taxi drivers. Most of these guys are working class individuals who are forced to work late hours just to make some money to take care of the bills and to take care of their families.

Many of them have repayment plans for their vehicles. When these guys are carjacked what happens is that their whole life is turned upside down. The bank or credit agency still has to be paid and you can wail from now till doomsday about being robbed, you still have to pay back what you had borrowed. The bank may say there are sorry but they still have to be paid.

One man whose vehicle was recently carjacked said that the parts stripped from the vehicle were valued at some $400,000. Now that is a lot of money and this man now has to work all over just to replace what he has lost.

There are individuals who work hard to buy a cell phone for the children or their partners and then someone likes what they see and decides to deprive the beneficiary of the phone. They go up to you and rob you of what you have. There is nothing that is more humiliating than knowing that someone can simply take from you what you have spent years accumulating. How can this be right?

And guess what, whenever the culprits are caught, they try to conceal their faces so that they will not be recognised. They hide their faces in their shirts, they pull their jerseys over their heads; they use their hands to cover their faces because they do not wish to be publicly embarrassed.

But have they ever stopped to think what they have done to someone else, to another man who when deprived of what he worked for does not know how he is going to put a meal on his family’s table or how he is going to continue to earn an income?

These crimes whereby persons are deprived of their hard-earned property happens every day.

But the crimes that make the sensational headlines are the large robberies. There are also other personal crimes in which the impact is greater for the victim than some of those larger crimes and therefore when persons are found guilty of these crimes, their identities should be made known so that others will be cautious around them and avoid falling into the same trap as the victims.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)