The Union of Security Employees has been pushing for mandatory security assessments as part of its ongoing efforts to improve the security sector ("Include terms for security guards' welfare in contracts" by Mr Shah Pakri; Dec 29, 2016).

This would involve enhancing security outcomes and raising the productivity of security officers.

Through this, the welfare of our officers can also be improved through fewer working hours and higher pay.

The recently launched Progressive Wage Model is a very important first step.

We strongly recommend that buyers of security services, be they asset owners or managing agents, first conduct a proper security assessment with their security agencies to determine the right level and type of security technologies to install.

This should include both hardware and software, and must be designed with better security outcomes in mind.

This assessment is critical, as we have observed that very often, the selected technology solutions are inadequate or do not complement the functionality of security manpower.

This leads to less than desired outcomes, with security officers often blamed for not being able to use the outmoded technology for unrealistic security outcomes.

Once the right technology solutions are deployed, a natural outcome is that the productivity of security officers improves vastly, as they will now be able to focus on their core tasks of providing security coverage, while repetitive and routine tasks are performed by machines.

This improved productivity will allow our security officers to benefit from shorter working hours and better pay.

Security contract terms should be fair to service buyers, security agencies and also the security officers.

Our security officers perform important roles and deserve to be respected and paid rightly for the work that they do.

Hareenderpal Singh

President

Union of Security Employees