‘We feel sad and guilty’: Donation box at a charity shop got stolen, with an estimated loss of over $30,000 donations

SINGAPORE: A very sad incident happened at a charity shop where ten donation boxes with over $30,000 worth of donations were suspected of being stolen. The owner of the shop located at Geylang East Avenue shared that at around 4 in the morning, the donation boxes that were placed in front of the shop went missing, as reported by 8world News. 

The owner admitted that these donation boxes placed outside the store were from different medical organisations, aimed to seek help from kind-hearted people who were willing to donate to a good cause. According to the owner, this situation also happened back in 2016, with tens of thousands of dollars worth of money being lost.

“After that, we added stainless steel fences to strengthen the protection and secured them with plastic tape. We also bring the donation boxes into the coffee shop to store them properly every day when we close,” the owner declared. 

In the past years, there have been no incidents of stealing the donation boxes, until this recent incident. The employee who was then responsible for packing up the donation boxes felt unwell and forgot to place the donation boxes inside the shop. Each box contains about $2,000 to $3,000 worth of donations, and the organisations collect them once a month. 

“We feel very sad and guilty because these donations are meant to help others. We really don’t know who would steal the donation box,” the owner further added. 

With this, the owner declared that the shop might not be able to put these donation boxes outside anymore, and hoped that, despite the change, people would still choose to help these organisations. 

The police confirmed that they have received the report and that further investigations are still ongoing. 

Other related news 

In similar news related to theft, there was a report where a 31-year-old Filipino woman stole 20 bottles of alcohol worth S$1,216 from a supermarket over the course of 12 separate thefts in just over a month. 

Her actions were eventually uncovered through CCTV footage, and she has since been sentenced to jail.

Read more about the news story here.