Bulawayo retailers criticised for armed robberies

BULAWAYO retailers who were recently hit by a spate of armed robberies, have been criticised for installing poor quality security systems with no capacity at all to assist police during investigations.

This comes in the wake of five armed robbers who have terrorised supermarkets in Bulawayo, holding-up workers after firing shots in the air and emptying cash tills before disappearing in the cover of darkness.

Choppies Supermarkets in Nkulumane and Fort Street in the Central Business District lost about $60 000 within a space of two months to robbers frequenting the shops, while Trek Garage in Mpopoma lost $3 500 to gun totting robbers two days ago.

Police spokesperson, Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo said it was saddening that most of the shops that had been robbed had sub-standard Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) appliances that do not aid police investigations.

"Most of these big and busy shops targeted by robbers do not have proper CCTV footages.

"The images will be of poor quality such that we cannot even identify the face of the robber.

"As a result, the robbers pounce again as they would still be on the loose," he said.

Moyo also said in hold-ups, victims of a robbery should strive to take a close look at the armed robbers' looks, complexion, hair, type of dressing, weapon they would be using and language used so as to assist police with investigations.

A security expert in CCTV cameras with a local company, Cummings Darien said the real problem with most retailers was that they were using cheap and fake cameras.

"The quality of CCTV should match that of a video camera but because of cash-flow problems, people buy cheap gadgets and what one sees at the end of the day are outlines of suspects instead of the picture," he says.

A proper CCTV camera should have at least two million pixels.