SECURITY GUARD SERVICE BRIEFING SESSION (20/03/2009)

Good morning Avillians, 

The committee members on that day had participated in a very colourful briefing session by the security guards sevices manager. Attended were most of the security guards for the day and night shift together with the replacement guards. 

The session took longer than the anticipated period as it became interesting at the later part of the session particularly during the Q&A sessions. Of course, the commiitte members agree with the manager that this would not be the last exercise and proposed in the near future, that sessions to be held regularly eg 1 in two months to follow up on feedbacks or any further requirements that would be required to enhance the security system in AA. 

The ultimate objective was to achieve a dual communication and interaction between the residents and the guards. The 1st half session was a situational interview posed by the manager to all the guards with some feedbacks interaction from the committee members. The later half was consist mostly feedbacks highlighted by the guards themselves in regards to the issues/challenges/obstacles faced by themselves. 

In most situations, we believe that most guards are carrying out their duty reasonably up to the 'standard' expectations in comparison to any security guards companies out there. We believe that in certain circumstances, we have to put ourselves in their shoes knowing what are the hurdles that may have befallen them in performing their task professionally. Many factors that should be considered would be the adequacy of knowledge of their responsibilites, any provision of development and training, adequacy of security personnel and so on. 

What interests us most which are occuring rampantly everywhere in the securities industry is that the security guards have been most of the time belittled, harshly scoffed and cursed at from performing their tasks as instructed by their superiors and in accordance to the Standard Operating Procedures. Yes, we definitely would agree occassionally that there will always be a rotten apple(s) in the basket that could jeopardise the whole purpose of having security guards in the compound. But, the question to ask is, are we living in the perfect world? Nobody is perfect, and therefore the need to generalise should be further avoided as when unwanted incidents happen, everyone would be quick to point heir fingers and victimise the unfortunate ones. In the briefing, most of the security guards understand that the main principle in running their job effectively is to provide reasonable security services to their "owners" aka residents and that whatever the condition is if any disputes is to arise, they must not verbally nor worse, physically abuse their owners. If the security guards who are actually providing a reasaonable service to safeguard our lives and assets with a mere basic salary can lower their pride while being scoffed at by certain owners, what more can we asked? In such situations, we would suggest that if any owner who is in the wrong yet insistingly complained that the guards are disrespectful of him/her, to consider again the humility values that he/she perceives. And therefore if you want respect, you will have to earn it... 

Finally, as mentioned in our previous comments, there is no such tools or sevices in the security sevices industry that can provide a perfect security system protecting us from any agent(s) who have ill intentions against the residents in the compound. There are may alternatives out there that allow us to minimise potential risks of burglary and physical harm and in order to make that happen, the cooperation of all the Avillians would be ultimately required.