Tuesday’s cops and robbers firefight triggered by the daring daylight heist of K300,000 from Ndola’s Star Bakery left four people dead, making the toll the highest number of people killed in a clash involving guns in Zambia in a long time.
It might be said the robbers deserved what they got, but the public is left angry and frustrated at the needless death of two police officers; Detective Sergeants Ben Chilubula and Francis Kunda, cut down as they went off after the bandits.
Speaking to some of their colleagues, the Copperbelt Police has lost two of its finest men in the brave and selfless pair.
We repeat the deaths resulting from the incident –including those of the robbers themselves could have been prevented, for this incident, like many others of a similar kind before it, should never have happened in the first place.
It happened only because of what can be described as criminal or contributory negligence on the part of Star Bakery.
How many times has the point been made about the need for businesses moving huge amounts of money to take some common-sense measures to reduce the risk of tragic incidents such as Tuesday’s?
There is strong suspicion of this event having been abetted with the help of unscrupulous bakery staff working with the suspected bandits; tipping them off about how the long weekend’s takings were being moved out of the bakery’s safe to wherever the money was meant to be going.
For how else would the robbers have managed to position themselves so strategically: right place and right time?
And how else would the evil minds behind this tragedy have been so confident of their plan succeeding unless the movement of the money had been made predictable by regular practice?
What would have happened had the robbers decided to enter the premises?
Had the incident ended only in the loss of the bakery’s money, there would have been no more than a ‘serves them right’ response from the public, but lives have been lost and families deprived of loved ones; two men who were sons, fathers and husbands.
This happens only because businesses prefer to take stupid risks to avoid negligible but critical expenses such as the fees that would have to be paid to a properly-equipped security service to safely move the money from one point to another.
The time has come for the authorities to put an end to this sort of conduct by businesses who risk the lives of innocent people –including their own – by such irresponsible behaviour.
We notice that the Bank of Zambia has taken measures to discourage large movements of cash, by such means as effecting a limit of K25,000 on the amount of money that businesses or individuals can encash in a day.
Such measures need to be extended to limiting the amount in cash transaction that businesses can do with their clients in a day to avoid them collecting such huge piles of money in their tills and safes that they become a target for robbers.
With so many people now having access to various means of electronic money transfer as well as the good old cheque-book, there is no reason why such measures should be hard to effect.
Along with other benefits, we believe this would help the Zambia Revenue Authority clamp down on a massive loophole for tax fraud.
More importantly, though, such measures may help to prevent a repeat of such tragedies as Tuesday’s horribly botched robbery with its appalling consequences.