Security guards

Inquirer Board Chair and columnist Raul Palabrica wrote a column in 2016 saying there are 500,000 licensed security guards in the Philippines, compared to 130,000 members of the Armed Forces and 160,000 for the Philippine National Police.

For years now, security guards have felt neglected, most of them getting only a bit more than the minimum wage even as they risk life and limb to protect offices and homes.

Admittedly, a hold-up or a burglary is rare, but the guards do have a deterrent effect and even if everyone, including myself, has some story about their lapses, we have just as many stories about how helpful they can be with all kinds of work that’s needed, from office maintenance to clerical tasks.

(I tell you, the guards are better than all those CCTVs if you need early warning about who’s doing what, and sometimes to whom, so be careful, even the boss is under surveillance. They just don’t tell if you don’t ask.)

For good reason, the current lockdown has seen praise heaped on our frontline workers in hospitals, but we do forget other kinds of frontline workers who risk infections by going to work. While not as exposed to the dangers, they’re also much less protected, quarantine or no quarantine.

I worry watching how they’ve become health workers in a sense, checking temperatures of people entering establishments and spraying hand sanitizers.

We know that masks and face shields are of limited use when the guards have to take verbal abuse from arrogant visitors and even members of the very institutions they’re protecting. UP Diliman will never forget that former regent who shouted at security guards when they stopped his vehicle because it didn’t have a UP sticker. These “Don’t you know who I am?” types are just too common, even during this time of an epidemic.

When the quarantine started, security guards woke up to find there was no more public transport, and could not take the emergency shuttles because they were not classified as essential workers. Neither are they entitled to hazard pay or any kind of social amelioration that has been promulgated for the quarantine.

I keep getting approached by UP’s guards about these problems, but the university’s administration can’t move on this. The national government has to provide from the still large surplus funds they have for the epidemic.

Sometimes the guards’ employers can take action on their own. Many guards live far from their work, sometimes even outside of Metro Manila. I’m grateful to some deans and then UP’s president and Diliman’s chancellor, who acted favorably when some of our guards appealed to be allowed to sleep over on campus. I do know some subdivisions that created barracks for their guards, and residents have been contributing food aid as well.

Let’s not forget the growing number of women guards. The lockdown put them in a particularly difficult situation, now having to leave homes earlier even as their kids, all out of school now, are left untended, and can’t be brought to work with their mothers. What an irony, guards whose own kids are left unguarded.

Legislators need to review Republic Act No. 5487 or the Private Security Agency Law that governs security guards and was enacted way back in 1969; it has some provisions that are stricter than those for the AFP and PNP. For example, RA 5487 has an age requirement of 21-50 years old. The AFP and PNP retirement age is 56 (and their dogs 8, which is the dog-year equivalent of 56).

RA 5487 requires a minimum height of 5’4” for both men and women. The AFP’s requirement is only 5 feet, and the PNP has dispensed with any minimum height.

(I tell you, I’ve found that our shorter guards are more hardworking than the taller ones, maybe compensating as in the Napoleon short-man syndrome. The taller ones, especially in subdivisions, do tend to be Lotharios, busy courting or being courted. One such tall, I don’t know if dark and handsome, subdivision guard even ran off with one of their senior residents.)

There have been some amendments, such as the Department of Labor and Employment’s Department Order No. 150, issued in 2016, that requires a minimum wage and benefits like social security. But much more needs to be legislated, including a long-term redundancy program to get guards retrained as they are replaced by CCTV, drones, and other surveillance technologies.

For now, though, let’s take care of their most immediate needs that come with the quarantine — needs that relate, ironically again, to security.

mtan@inquirer.com.ph