Security officers ‘most abused’

Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday May 29, 2023 06:00

The Department of Labour’s Sylvester Komoki revealed at a stakeholder engagement for Procuring Entities and Security Services providers that security workers frequent their offices more than those from other sectors.

“Our statistics show that most of the cases we have are from the security employees. In April, we had 931 disputes of which most were about security companies. More than half of them involved security companies.

Over 200 of them have been dealt with while over 400 are still being dealt with. This is a serious cause for concern and all stakeholders should play their role,” he said. He went on to share the common labour disputes that they come across involving security companies and their employees. “One of the issues that we get in high numbers is complaints of late payment of salaries.

People get paid late and in some instances, the late payments are not even enough. As if that is not enough, we also still have people getting paid below the minimum wage,” he said.

“On top of that you will find that there are unauthorised deductions on those payments. Some of these are said to be deductions to pay for some items that would have been stolen while they were on duty. As much as it is okay to sometimes recover costs, you will find that they are sometimes blamed in situations where there could be many other perpetrators than them.” Other disputes include that some hours would not be paid with the employer querying that the employee did not work all the specified hours. “And then there are terminal benefits that should be paid at the end of the contract. You find that in most cases, employees are not paid the benefits at all.

This is at times due to the fact that the companies had under quoted and are then unable reserve funds for the benefits. The employment allows for the employer to deduct a certain amount from the employee so that they could at the end be able to pay some of these benefits without struggle,” he said. Komoki said they use mediation where they call companies and the employees before referring it to courts if mediation fails. He said it was unfortunate that in most cases employers would not respond or even show up when called forward. He warned that it was a crime not to pay employees as one could find them behind bars and face other sanctions.

Komoki said one common reason they get from security companies for failure to pay employees is late payments made by Procuring Entities. “It is however to note that the employee has no contract with any PE, but rather their employer is the security company. The issue is not a reason enough before us as Labour department,” he said.

In response, Security Association of Botswana (SAB) chairperson, Sam Kealotswe said the main reason security companies fail to pay dues is because of late payment by government as well as granting of tenders to the lowest bidders which then makes it difficult to them to comply with the tender needs.

He further said they sometimes encounter instances where security guards would hide invitations to Labour meetings so the case may continue without them only for them to get a call from the Police or Industrial court. He says such worries them as they end up having to pay heftily.