Guards also need security

INDUSTRY: REGULATOR BERATED Association says up to 600 are killed on duty annually.

As violent crime spirals out of control, security guards, the first line of defence for many South Africans, have also come under increasing attack – with up to 300 apparently killed in the line of duty annually.

The Association of Private Security Owners of SA (Tapsosa) is convinced the number could be as high as 600, as many additional cases were not recorded as deaths on duty.

Role players have lamented that though the private security industry was the biggest after mining, there was scant regard for it, which has seen the mushrooming of exploitative and unscrupulous companies.

Security guards are also targeted during protests and strikes, with some of the first people to be killed in Marikana, North West, in the run-up to the 16 August, 2012 massacre being two Lonmin guards, who were hacked to death.

According to Tapsosa, industry regulator Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (Psira) relied on private security companies for information on employees killed on duty, but said this data was first “sanitised” to conceal noncompliance – included hiring foreigners and arming guards without firearms competency certificates.

While Psira is yet to respond to questions, the Security Association of SA said it doubted if the regulator would be able to provide statistics to verify this.

National administrator Tony Botes said this was because Psira was only advised by the security businesses on a monthly basis, online, that a security officer is active, retired or deceased.

He said, for example, Psira’s database had close to two million registered security officers, but in fact only about 550 000 were registered and active. “And this does not include the many thousands of unregistered we believe to be active, many – of course – possibly undocumented foreigners.”

Tapsosa deputy president Lebo Nare said the industry was twice the size of the SA National Defence Force and the SA Police Service combined, with government being the biggest consumer of private security services, but yet it was the most overlooked.

“This allows company owners to get away with a lot, including hiding the fact that a security guard died on duty because that guard is a foreign national who should not have been hired in the first place, let alone be given a firearm.”

Nare said official figures indicated that at least between 250 and 300 security guards were killed annually but said the figure was much higher.

According to Nare, in many cases in such deaths, honesty would not benefit the security company owner, meaning it is in their best interest to be economical with the truth.

The Private Security Sector Forum agreed that Psira was failing security guards and that government had scant regard for the industry.

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