The private security industry is growing rapidly in the country and the number of private security guards has now become four times the police force. Amidst this growth in the sector, there are voices to outsource the “softer” police functions to private security agencies.
The private security industry is one of the largest employers in India, with 8.5 million people compared to 2.2 million police personnel. Estimates say there are 16,000 private security agencies in the country and they have the potential to employ an additional 3 million people by 2020. As per Bureau of Police Research and Development, there should be one policeman for 547 people, whereas this number is 712.
A large workforce in the private security space can be utilised to make up for the low police to citizen ratio, and some areas of policing, like senior citizen monitoring, and other government establishments, event security and police verification, could be outsourced to private security agencies, says a report of the PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report, however, says this needs to be coupled with rigorous training and security compliances which these agencies may be asked to fulfil to become eligible for such business. “There is immense pressure on the police forces and indirectly on the armed forces. The time has come to introspect and find answers from within our resources. Besides the optimisation of the armed forces and police organisations, we have to look at alternative resources. A study needs to be undertaken to identify ‘softer’ police functions that could be handed over to the private security sector. This could initially be discharged jointly with the police, followed by the private security sector alone, with marginal police supervision retained in more critical areas,” says Major General D.K. Jamwal (Retd), ex-CEO, SSSDC (Security Sector Skill Development Council), in the report.
The report says, with the passage of time, security companies have evolved from servicing only homes and businesses and are now focusing on servicing the government. “With a high level of advancements in technology, services like electronic security services, integrated facility management and security architecture and engineering will see greater prominence in times to come. This not only has the potential to improve the quality of services offered by security companies, but may also prove to be a boon for the large workforce who will have the opportunity to up-skill themselves and progress to engaging employment conditions,” it points out.
Talking about service conditions, the report says that about 60% of the security service providers still operate as unorganised, thereby keeping the sector pricing oriented and amenable to unfriendly employment practices and making it difficult to monitor quality and compliance. Lack of quality manpower, high attrition rates and compliance requirements also continue to pose major challenges to the growth of the manned guarding security services market.
“People are ready to pay a premium for their safety. Trained security guards are not only manning private offices, but also being employed by various government organisations and households,” Dilip Chenoy, ex-Managing Director and CEO, National Skill Development Council, says in the report.