Agencies urged to handle security guards well

The Union of Private Security Employees, Ghana (UPSEG) on Thursday called on out-sourcing agencies to pay the right wages to security guards they post to other companies to avoid compromising on professionalism.

According to UPSEG, some of the agencies pay their guards below the minimum wage and thereby force them to lower standards.

Nana Kofi Adu II, General Secretary of UPSEG, in a media encounter in Accra blamed clients of the out-sourcing agencies for not following up to see if they are given the right wages to the guards.

He said in future UPSEG would sue such clients at the law court for negligence because they failed to visit such agencies to see if what they have signed in the contract is being pursued.

“As a union, we will not kick against out-sourcing but before they out-source a guard they should be able to determine what goes to the guards and that must be on paper for the guards to also see,” he added.

Nana Adu also complained that junk of private security companies are operating without license and urged the Ministry of the Interior to form a task force to find out companies for them to do the right thing.

He said currently more than the 1000 private security companies that are operating, only 16 of them are duly registered with the unions and advised those who are yet to register to do so to protect the well-being of their workers.

He also pledged the union’s preparedness to register such companies and offer them training session on the labour law.

On Value Added Tax Law, Nana Adu II appealed to the government to review the duration of submission returns.

He said most at times, companies that are supposed to pay the tax do not do so on time and getting them to pay the money to pay on the period of duration would be a concern to most administrators of private security companies.

He also appealed to government to issue a directive to all chiefs and people using the services of “Land Guards” to duly register them so that the bad ones are flushed out.

“The concept of land guards is not a bad one but because they are not registered, some bad people capitalise on that to dupe innocent people. The work of a private security is to prevent unauthorised people from entry or permit authorised people entry into a place.

“So if I bought a plot of land somewhere and I chose to use the services of a private security to prevent unauthorised person from encroaching on the land, that should be possible if we have duly registered these chiefs and people using these young people for easy identification,” he added.