Can ill-trained security guards provide security to shoppers in Gurgaon?

06 February, 2013

Not only has the recent incident, in which a security guard was beaten up by a group of men at the Sahara Mall in Gurgaon, added to the insecurity of shoppers, but it has also raised serious questions on the training provided to security guards by various agencies in the city.

CCTV footage showed around eight men beating up the guard, reportedly for objecting to two of them urinating in the parking lot. The youth didn’t stop there as they barged into the nearby control room and beat up the security manager too.

The incident has once again brought Gurgaon’s security agencies under the scanner. Only last month, the owner and president of Skylark Security Services, Gurgaon, T C Rao said that most of the security agencies in the city don’t train their guards and don’t follow correct procedures in recruiting and deploying guards.

"Only five to six agencies operating in Gurgaon have proper licenses and training establishment units, which are also mandatory. More than 400 agencies do not have training establishment units and licenses,” Dr Rao told this citizen journalist .

The additional Director General of Police (ADGP) (Law & Order) MS Mann had also promised to take strict and legal action against the agencies violating the norms. He also said that some of these agencies are operating after getting fake licenses, “which is a great cause of worry”. He had requested DCP Gurgaon to conduct a high-level inquiry to investigate the issue and find such agencies and punish them.

But it seems that no such action has been taken by the administration to curb these fake agencies who train these ‘helpless’ guards who can’t even save themselves, let alone saving the visitors to these malls. “People, who were in the mall, also saw guard getting beaten up and remaining people saw on the TV. What impression or confidence they will have now in these guards,” asked Ravish Bhatia, a Gurgaon resident.

The least, the government can do is provide self-defence training to these guards. This will at least build some confidence in the people who visit these malls.