Shop owner says damage was ‘racist’
Vandals throw tile through door of sushi shop that’s struggling amid building of CRL
Vandals have thrown a tile through the door of a central Auckland sushi shop in an attack the Korean owner believes may have been racist. The tile appears to have been taken from a pile of tiles and other construction materials left outside the Albert St shop by contractors building the $4.4 billion City Rail Link.
Krwoon Keum, 62, said the vandals may have seen a television interview last week in which he complained about losing 60 per cent of his customers because of the rail link construction work, which has blocked the footpath just north of his shop.
“They broke only the window [in the door],” he said. “They didn’t come inside. The alarm went off and they ran away.
“I was on Prime TV news on Thursday. Maybe some people don’t like to come out and talk to my complaints about the council.
“They broke the window . . . It’s something like abuse, showing hate. We don’t like that, it’s very upsetting because of the discrimination.”
The organiser of a group of 16 Albert St businesses seeking compensation for loss of business caused by the rail link, Sunny Kaushal, said he didn’t think the attack was racially motivated, but he said all 16 businesses were Asianowned and felt they were not being treated fairly.
“If they were owned by Europeans or Ma¯ori, I think the treatment would have been very different,” he said.
Keum, who has owned the shop for 16 years, said his revenue had suffered for two and a half years and dropped from $3000 a day to $1300 a day since the latest barricades were put up on his block three months ago.
“I cannot pay my landlord almost one year. My landlord knows how very hard the situation is.
“Also I cannot pay some taxes because I have had to put money to wages and materials and things like that. So one year I cannot pay GST . . . but nobody helps me.”
He said he had laid off his two staff and he and his wife now did everything, including cleaning the shop.
The Chinese owner of a restaurant next to his shop had closed down and returned to China. Keum has survived only because he also has a Queen St shop, which is profitable.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Transport Minister Phil Twyford both said last week that the Government was talking to businesses about some form of support, but Kaushal said there had been no negotiations with any in his group of 16.
Keum said that in Korea a condition of big construction projects was that builders paid compensation upfront to any affected businesses before they could start building.
He said the contractors should not have left unsecured construction materials on the road.
“They should secure their stone.”
A City Rail Link spokesman said the company “takes its responsibilities seriously to keep businesses and people safe around all its work sites”.
“It will contact the business involved, the police and its contractors to seek further information about this incident and if project construction was involved,” the spokesman said.
“We keep people — residents and business owners — informed of work activities, sight lines around buildings are kept as clear as safely as is possible, footpaths are kept clear, and additional lighting has been installed along sections of Albert St.”
Police said they were making inquiries into the vandalism.