Some private security managers have protested Private Security Regulatory Authority (PRSA) new rules announced by Director general Fazul Mahamed, which includes setting up the minimum pay for the security guard.
Private Security players within Western region led by Gaulkey Kweya while speaking to press on Tuesday, decried the new rules saying many security companies are struggling to survive in business and those that are coming up will not be able to conform with the rules.
They said PRSA should have rated the companies into classes for the new regulations to work without oppressing others.
“PRSA should have consulted the stakeholders in the private security sector to see how the new rules can be implemented. PRSA cannot put all security companies on one scale. We have some private security companies that can pay their guards more than Sh30,000 but we have others that cannot pay such an amount," he said.
“We want the director general to suspend those regulations and re-consider the smaller companies in the sector to create a humble ground of operation,” Kweya said.
Already, PRSA had said companies that will fail to comply, the owners will be fined Sh2 million or face a jail term.
They said PRSA led by Mahamed is not friendly but out to force some of the security companies’ to shut down their businesses.
“We have seen the government through the Private Security Regulatory Authority, coming up with new rules to manage the security industry. Those new rules are oppressive to some companies which are still struggling in business,” they said.
“What they should have done was to categorise those firms from the zones of operations and scale down the rates,” Kweya said.
In a joint statement, they said the minimum pay of security guard set at Sh30,000 is not possible to small companies. Kweya questioned how a security company will force a client to pay over Sh30,000 for the guard deployed at his or her premises.
"Mahamed should also tell us how those guards should be trained and who will incur the costs," he said, adding that struggling companies might not be able to sustain trained guards when other well established are there to hire them.
They said the PRSA was very fast to give out the new rules, adding that the authority should have subjected the new regulations to public participation for the security players to give their views.
