Total Lack of Respect - How Do You Deal With Petty Thieves?

Business
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[SIZE=6]Start a business, watch it collapse slowly, one theft at a time[/SIZE]

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 21 2019

https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/image/view/-/4990992/highRes/2257943/-/maxw/600/-/l989i0/-/traders.jpg
The bustling trading centre of Nakivubo in Kampala. PHOTO | NMG
In Summary
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[li]Most lethal for the small and medium-sized businesses that Ugandans launch in their thousands on a daily basis is the belief held by the people they employ that a job opportunity ought to be an opening for one to start planning to start their own business.[/li][/ul]
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https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/image/view/-/3334774/medRes/1687793/-/dxvf71z/-/mutebi.jpg[B]By FREDRICK GOLOOBA-MUTEBI[/B]
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Over the years, research by, or example, the World Economic Forum, has shown that Ugandans are easily East Africa’s most entrepreneurial people.
Every year they start large numbers of new businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises especially. Perhaps even more interesting, again every year, businesses collapse in their multitudes.

Well, first there are not that many people with an aptitude for doing business. Success cannot be simply a matter of having cash to invest, contrary to what a lot of people with money to spare believe. Nor can it be a matter simply of copying what someone else has done and been successful at, which is what would-be entrepreneurs who are lacking in imagination but have money to invest, tend to do.

This copycat culture explains, for example, why one finds so many fruit and vegetable sellers, drinking and eating joints, hair salons, car washing bays, “fast food restaurants,” “supermarkets,” “hotels,” and mobile money kiosks, within say an area covering one square kilometre, all fighting for the same customers. Invariably, many of these collapse within a short period of being launched.

But perhaps most lethal for the small and medium-sized businesses that Ugandans launch in their thousands on a daily basis is the belief held by the people they employ that a job opportunity ought to be an opening for one to start planning to start their own business.
Yes, large numbers of the desperate unemployed, who by some stroke of luck land jobs with would-be entrepreneurs, immediately take to scheming and exploiting every opportunity they get for making money on the side.

By way of illustration, while out shopping for some livestock to take to his small farm, an acquaintance found himself in a strange situation. He had gone to buy the animals from an upcoming farmer who nonetheless was not farming full-time. Employed as a bureaucrat, he had entrusted his enterprise to a “manager” to run.

This trusted person offered the shopper a deal: He would sell him some animals on the side, about which his boss should not get to know, because “some of these animals are mine.” The would-be purchaser saw this for the nonsense it was, rejected the deal and bought only those animals that the boss was guaranteed to know about.

Had he accepted the “deal,” the boss would probably have been fed on some bogus story. And if buyers kept accepting such deals, the farm would likely collapse at some point, in which case the trusted caretaker would go on to start his own and also fail along the way.

Another story I heard recently, was from an acquaintance who decided to invest her savings in a sauna and massage parlour. She had heard that owners of such establishments were making a killing. So she found premises and purchased all the inputs necessary. And for some time after she launched the business, it seemed as if the sky would be the limit.

However, soon enough, stuff started disappearing: Soaps, lotions, towels. Although she devised ways of combating the disappearances, including sackings, it seemed as if the thieves were always a step ahead. In the end, the business collapsed.

It all goes to show the dark side of the drive for success that sometimes underlies the laudable dynamism of sections of Uganda’s private sector.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]

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Ookay, but please Replace Uganda with kenya and Kampala with Nairobi.

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Replace it with the whole world over. Because it’s replicated everywhere. Theft by servant. Call it, aptly so, internal bleeding, which is mostly more dangerous than external bleeding.

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The second paragraph makes no sense. The trusted person is the one who went to buy the livestock. So he is the shopper. How did he switch to be offering deals while he was there to buy in the first place?
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi must learn to edit his work

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Usijali elder, you are just too old to understand this Queen’s language

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The easiest way to deal with petty theft is to deduct everyone’s salary. Trust me. Workers wataingia laini.

You should see how big restaurants operate. If the manager buys 50kg of rice meant to serve 400 people and the income collected is based on 390 plates yet there is no difference, employees are penalized. May seem ruthless but this is the only way of combating pilferage especially when dealing with unskilled or semi skilled labour

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Haaai wee ndiye hushikanishi

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Wacha nijaribu tena

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I think that this might be a huge problem and dangerous for business. The owners should pay high attention and control well operating processes and their employees. It might be good idea to have processes in place where good is in some way counted on a daily basis, so that thefts are spotted on time