Dear Editor,

Due to the notorious scam in our housing estate, many old people have been tricked by the criminals which pose threats to our community. An incident of the scam would be demonstrated to remind our residents from being tricked and some preventive methods the estate association can take to protect people from being tricked in future. Hopefully these can comfort the residents.

First, a fraud of an old person cheated by the criminals would be stated. In retrospection, the victim was on the way going home, a hopeless-looking lady walked past him and shared her pitiful experience of being deceived by the cheaters and becoming homeless. By showing his sympathy to the lady, he gave her some money. Subsequently, two men appeared suddenly to rob the woman's money which he gave her. He ran and struggled to catch them but could not succeed. When he wanted to turn back to comfort the lady, he also found that the woman and his money disappeared. He realized that he was tricked.

In view of this, the estate association has to take some actions to protect people from being tricked in future.

First of all, the estate association needs to strengthen the guard patrol to enhance the security. For example, the number of guards has to be increased from one guard to three guards for the night patrolling in order to scrutinize any strangers entering the estate. Moreover, more resources are used to have regular patrolling in the crime scenes and black spots. With these measures, criminals would not blatantly cheat our residents. This can prevent the crime from happening. Hopefully it can protect people from being tricked in future.

Also, new posters can be made to enhance the awareness of crime prevention to the residents. Without the help of the posters around the estate, our residents are not aware of the possible dangers around them, resulting the low alertness. So, it is not difficult for the criminals to trick the residents. Therefore, with more posters posted in our estate, such as the notice board, escalator and many places, our residents can  become more vigilant to the tricks and methods employed by the strangers. Therefore, the crime rates in our housing estate can be greatly reduced.

To sum up, the crimes are seriously harmful to our estate. I hope these actions can be helpful to prevent the residents being tricked again.

Yours faithfully,

5B Chan Ren Mao

HHCKLA Buddhist Ching Kok Secondary School