Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment prop­er leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try. Speak­ing at Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad on Tues­day, pres­i­dent of the EPA, Edi­son Munroe, said al­though sev­er­al meet­ings were held with the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss the is­sue, noth­ing was done to safe­guard ex­ploit­ed es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers.

"It was dis­heart­en­ing to hear the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty be­moan­ing the fact that bu­reau­cra­cy was de­lay­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty Bill," he said. Say­ing this ex­cuse was un­ac­cept­able, Munroe said too many se­cu­ri­ty work­ers were be­ing ex­ploit­ed.

"While peo­ple suf­fer, the State is mov­ing full steam ahead with the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty Net­work Com­mis­sion with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion with the EPA," he said. He added that se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies which toed the Gov­ern­ment line were be­ing laud­ed while they con­tin­ued to ex­ploit in­no­cent work­ers.

"There are in ex­cess of over 400 pro­tec­tive se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and sup­ple­men­tal po­lice bod­ies op­er­at­ing in our coun­try and these em­ploy over 60,000 peo­ple," Munroe said. He added that many of these work­ers were women. Say­ing that 50 per cent of these com­pa­nies were op­er­at­ing with­out the law­ful ap­proval of the State, Munroe said this was enough rea­son to im­ple­ment prop­er leg­is­la­tion.

He said his as­so­ci­a­tion made sev­er­al re­quests to meet with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dr Dwayne Gibbs, who, ac­cord­ing to the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Act, has su­per­in­ten­dence over the es­tate po­lice. How­ev­er, he said Gibbs failed to ac­knowl­edge his re­quests.

"While they fum­ble over the draft­ing of the bill, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to be ful­ly ex­ploit­ed and abused by man­agers of these agen­cies," Munroe said. He said some se­cu­ri­ty guards worked in ex­cess of 60 hours per week.