Prisoners in Their Own Stores - The Danger of Operating a Small Business in Panama

Since the Penonome church does not have a full/ part time pastor, our Torotno church tries to support the congregation here as much as possible while awaiting for the search of a missionary matching the needs of this local church.

While our Short Term Mission team is here, we try to visit and follow up as many new believers and church members as possible. 

One of the last people we visited on the last day of our Panama trip was S.M. and his father who has not been to the Sunday Service at the church for quite some time.

S.M. wants to be a teacher and plans to obtain teacher qualification in a year's time.  We invited him to be more involved in teaching the kids at church. Though it was his first time teaching, he did a very good job in last Sunday's children's worship!






S.M.'s neighbourhood  store

 



We went to visit him at his store located not too far away from the church.

It is a neighbourhood conveninece type of store selling mostly drinks and snacks.

There were a few people hovering around the door of the store. Instead of going inside the store and shopping for the items themselves, the customers looked through the locked metal door and requested the items they wanted. Then S.M. went around the store collecting all the items and adding up the total cost. He handed over the items and the customers fork ove the cash, both through a samll opening in the metal door.



S.M.'s house behind his store

We asked S.M. if he had always run his store this way. He replied no and infomred us that he started selling behind a locked door after he had been robbed four times.

Not only was he robbed, he was also beaten and injured in the robbery.

He was so shaken up and frightened by the robbers that he decided to call it quit.

As soon as he sells most of the inventory, he would close the family store. However, during the mean time, he must protect himself by locking himself behind the metal door.

Unfortunately, conducting business and selling behind a locked door is not an uncommon practise in Panama for small business owners who are under the constant fear and threat of robbery. 

Another store owner selling behind locked gate

During the last two weeks, we visited and got to talk to over a dozen of small business owners.

From them we learned about the rampant incidents of  robbery that target a certain segment of the business community.

S.M was the fifth victim of violent crime and robbery from among the dozen of people we visited.

    

      

   These store owners are hard working people trying to make a living by opening stores and serving the community. But small mom and pop stores are particulary vulnerable and are easy targets for robbery.  We all feel bad for hard working people such as S.M.

We sincerely hope that Panama would improve its justice system and protect business and innocent people such  as S.M. and Mrs. La whose husband was murdered during a recent robbery at their store.

R.T.,Panama

          Nov., 2013