The head of a money exchange company in Fiji has written to police asking for greater protection after more than 40,000 US dollars has been stolen in two robberies this month.
The General Manager of Fexco Fiji, Steven Narayan, says in the latest incident yesterday four masked men with knives threatened a teller by smashing beer bottles on the counter and left with 10,000 US dollars.
He says the Christmas period is always busy as money is sent to people in Fiji from relatives overseas.
"It's the nature of the business that people know that we will be carrying a lot of cash at this time and we are the target at the moment. But we will be grateful, as I said I've written to the police, if they could provide additional back up. Whoever is trying to target, if they see the police presence, that will stop them from trying to attack us."
Mr Narayan says it took the police half an hour to arrive but if there had been police on foot patrol in the area they could have called for back up and more quickly set up road blocks to stop the criminals.
