Update
It has been 1 and half months since my last post. Think I'm switching position with my dear dear. She blogs more regularly than me and has more interesting pictures and features. (Go visit her blog if you have not done so. (^.^)For the past few weeks, I was busy with a big project. Thank God for His wisdom and strength, I was able to plan systematically and accurately (without careless mistakes in figures) the allocation of cables and marking of them. It is for the supply of a building of 3 new oil rigs in the western side of Singapore. Finally the supplying of cables got going, and by supplying means we are able to bill the customer. That would ease our company's financial burdens.
Thank God that my dear dear's final year examinations are over, and so is her FYP. Bye bye to NTU and hello to NIE though she still don't know whether her application will go through but I strongly believe that it is a blessing if NIE brings her into the teaching world where she will make an positive impact to the future generation and bringing hope! She's going to HongKong tomorrow morning 6am and it would be 5 days with her NTU gal frens. Though I'll miss her, I would want her to enjoy and relax for this first overseas trip without her parents tagging along or forbidding her to go.
I was procrastinating from updating the blog because I was physically, mentally tired after a day's work and blogger seems to take very long to load (not to mention pictures) but yesterday's incident was too much for me to keep it to myself. Decided to blog it and realised that blogger system has improved! It takes less than 5min for my 5pictures to be uploaded! Cool! Oh ya, the following pictures are real and taken from my new K800i sony ericsson cybershot cameraphone. Bye bye Nokia, hello S.E. Ok, back to the incident.
Yesterday morning at 750am, when one of our colleagues reach office (she's served more 25years in the company), she realised that the main gate was half opened. The gate's holder was cut open with a metal cutter. So was the warehouse door. Something was amiss, she decided to call boss and say most probably kena broken into. My dad told her to call the police while we are making our way there. When we reached, decided to leave everything as it is until the police came. One by one, our fellow colleagues came to report for work as usual and realised that the office has been broken into. Everything was halted, not to touch anything, not to enter until the police come. It took the police more than half an hour to reach the place. Wa lau, such efficiency. The main police headquarters is just less than 5min drive away. If there was a real burglar in the scene, i think they could have run off far far and the police would not be at the crime scene yet.
The cutter that was supposed used to cut both the metal gate and the warehouse door. Stupid of the burglars (coz we believe not just 1) to leave the cutter behind.
The gate that was being cut. The stainless steel lock was still left at the side undamaged.
The little things you see on the ground are not crystals or diamonds. They seems like broken glass that was being smashed onto the side or back of a pickup or van that they stole. (our neighbour's pickup was reported loss that very morning too.) There was similar shattered glass at the front of our neighbour's gate.
This empty space with black plastic wrap that you see here are the 2 big drums of cables that were stolen. Apparently it seems that this is done by a syndicate or someone who knows the market well. As copper has increased 3-4times its usual price, the demand is very high. These burlgars strike at those cables that they are able to carry AND those that contain alot of copper. So where are the drums now?
Tada! Here they are! The burglars pushed the drums into the logistics area so that no one can see. coz at night our areas are very brightly lid (we supply lightings too). Imagine you one person walk into the place and realised the place has been burglared, i think you would be real paranoid. See the 2 empty drums, those big drums were what the burglars aimed. Big cables with alot of copper. Those small cables they left it aside, they didn't take. Who is the person inspecting the cables? He is from the forensic department to check for fingerprints coz this cable was cut but it's too tedious to cut all of them. They took 2 meter and gave up. What's frustrating was that they are like mice, they cut on some cable's jacket to see if inside got thick copper or not and by doing so, the cables would be damaged and unsellable.
Total damage and loss accumulated to about 30k. It hasn't add in the opportunity cost of the whole morning's operation of the company. The worst is that we bought fire insurance but not theft. This would mean that if we were to buy now, they would charge at a premium coz our area was broken into. Never before in 30years history of the company that there happened such an incident. Apparently, there was 2 similar theft cases that happened in the vicinity for the last month but it wasn't reported to the public nor the neighbourhood. Ours only police report, never ask ST or TNP or Wanbao to come.
I can think of the following reasons.
- don't want unnecessary publicity, it would lead other burglars to come into the place because it has been broken into once.
- don't want to lose any reputation
However, if nothing is done, the syndicate will just grow bigger and bolder. There are 2 to 3 foreign workers hostel just nearby the vicinity and with Singapore welcoming more foreign workers, these social issues will not decrease. The police that came are all well fed by looking at their size and the walking posture. If they were to chase a burglar, 103% definitely run lose.
What good things I can see from the incident that happened.
- We can see our colleagues all felt for the company. A few stayed back after office hours to ensure that the gates are repaired and everything is locked and secured(for those cables that are outside) before leaving the office. Some of them even specially turned into our office yesterday night and this morning just to see if everything was ok.
- Another thing was that losing money is nothing compared to losing a life. It would be worse if it was daylight robbery.
- Our security would be upped. There will be an auto gate (which means no need lock and by manual force one would unable to force the heavy sturdy gate open). There would be motion sensors on all entrances of the gate. Once opened, alarm will sound off.
- CCTV connected to the internet so that one can even see what's happening at night at the parking area and inside the store.
- buying theft insurance of coz.
As the company progress into the 31st year of operation and beyond, more improvements has to be made to keep up with the technology of the world.
posted by tornado @ 9:15 PM
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