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I'm not insensitive to the fact that extreme levels of financial stress/poverty can make people act out of character.

I don't know much about cost of living in Pakistan but what you're paying him is substantially above the annual average household income in the country, which might indicate that he's either experiencing some additional pressures or (and I hate to say it) he's just skimming.

Obviously you are quite within your rights to just report him to the police and wash your hands of the situation. If however you want to see if this is just a desperate person doing desperate things and give him a chance you could talk with him, calmly explain that you know what he's been doing and offer him a chance to tell his side of the story.

Then you can make a call - if he's struggling to make ends meet on the wage, particularly if it is something that is transient (medical bill or whatever) then you have the option to officially pay/loan him the money and stress that stealing is unacceptable and that you won't tolerate it again but that you are prepared to at least listen to him if he comes to you with issues.

If you think he's skimming or his story doesn't add up or whatever then you can either fire him or fire him and report him.

Regardless I don't think turning a blind eye to it is the right way to go.

He is still a very trust worthy person for me because he helped me in my difficult times.

I would doubt that this is true.

The fact that this person has helped you before doesn't justify him stealing money from you in the present. If any, this person is being disrespectful to the trust you had in the past.

If you should fire him is up to you, but you should definitely bring this up to him, and talk about the incident in person, so you can work it out in a way you consider adequate. Anyways, stealing is a serious offense, in some contexts it can mean immediate firing, if not prison or something else, so this is not something to be taken lightly

should i fire him from job or should i talk to him about this?

I would talk to him about this, and then fire him. I would do it now before he steals more.

I was part owner of a small business in the past. One thing that was absolute was that theft simply cannot be tolerated. We had to fire one of our original employees for stealing. She was also caught on camera. It was tough to do, but it was the right thing.

I once worked for a supermarket chain. One of my young coworkers was fired for stealing a $0.19 pen from the adjoining store. It sent the clear message to all the other employees that stealing was simply not tolerated.

It doesn't matter if this employee is a nice person. It doesn't matter if they helped you out in the past. Right now, this person is a thief. And if you tolerate one thief then you need to expect all your other employees to follow suit. That's no way to run a business.

Talk nicely. Offer to help him in his new job search. But fire him immediately.

He can't stay.

If he's stealing from you now, he'll steal from you again even if he promises not to. My family owned a small business for about 50 years and employees that were caught stealing always went back to their old ways even when given a second chance.

You need to fire him, but you definitely don't need to report him to the police.

While I have no direct knowledge of how the legal system works in Pakistan, I suspect that you might ruin his life or cause him much greater harm than he has caused you.

If you have the money and like him, you can just tell him that you don't need him anymore, and give him some severance pay. He'll know why he's being fired. There's nothing to be gained by punishing him.

If you were a big corporation with an HR department, things would be different, but this is your place and you can run it as you wish.

In Argentina, you keep them. You consider the cost of what they're stealing and the cost * risk of what they might steal in the future, and if that is greater than the cost of firing him, hiring a replacement, training a replacement, the risk of the replacement not being as good as this person and the risk of the replacement also stealing, then you keep them.

Of course, if you think any form of theft must absolutely be punished, and this is more important to you than having an otherwise good employee, then you already have your own answer. You have your answer as well if you believe a person stealing a small amount of money from you is worse than allowing a family to starve.

You should be very careful in what responsibilities you assign this person in the future, because if you allow this to keep happening it can scale out of your control. One sure way to control this would be to talk to them and tell them that you know, and that they shouldn't do that. Don't do it as a reprimand, since their own consciousness is already punishing them enough (and if it isn't, then you should re-evaluate whether you keep them or not). Try to find out why they are doing this. Remember, they helped you in the past. Do they need your help now? Can you help them?

If you had a better system for keeping your accounts, you would have known money was missing from the till at the end of each day without the security camera.

You probably need that level of basic accounting (i.e. checking that the total of the till receipts matches the amount of money in the cash drawer), whoever you employ. Otherwise, they will soon figure out that they can get away with skimming the till, and once they have found out where the security camera is, they will figure out a way to hide from it (e.g. one employee stands in a position that blocks the camera's view while another one takes the money).

Of course that basic check doesn't catch every thief, because a "sale" might not be put through the till at all - the customer's money goes straight into the thief's pocket not into the till, especially if the customer isn't bothered about having a printed receipt (and I assume that in Pakistan, there will be some customers who won't care about a piece of paper that they might not be able to read anyway).

If you don't want to fire the guy for personal reasons, a "subtle" way to deal with this is to tell all your staff that from now on, there will be a daily check for missing money. If you do find anything has gone missing, put a notice somewhere that all the staff (but not the customers) can see, with a record of when and how much you have lost.

Unless the thief is really stupid, he will get the message that keeping his fingers out of the till in future is probably a good idea!

Is this your own pharmacy or are you managing it for a larger company?

If it's your own pharmacy, it's your decision. I can't say what would be most appropriate, as it is much more about cultural norms than anything else at this point. In the U.S., the person would pretty much have to be fired, as knowingly tolerating this could cause you to lose the licenses and certifications required to handle some controlled-access medications, which I assume would be essential to your business.

If you're the manager and the pharmacy is owned by a larger company, there should be clear guidelines for you to follow. If you aren't certain, call whomever you report to and ask for guidance.

Tell him you know he wouldn't steal from you unless he really needed it. Therefore you're going to raise his salary by the amount he has been stealing.

But if it ever happens again he will be dismissed on the spot because you need to know you can trust your employees so you can't tolerate stealing.

If you own the pharmacy, and the money in the register is indeed your own money, and you have video evidence of this employee taking that money then you should report him to the local police and terminate their employment.

Normally, the cash is counted before and after the cashier is on duty and the amount rung on the register should be added to the starting amount and be present in the ending amount. This is why people invented the cash register.

If he needed more money he could have asked for a raise. If his family was starving, as some people here assume, he could have explained this to you and asked for a raise.

If I was caught stealing I 100% expect that I would get fired. My boss wouldn’t be able to trust me. He might get into legal trouble if he kept me employed and I did something worse. So yes, he should be fired.

You might have a discussion with him, and there might be exceptional circumstances, but that is unlikely.