Fazul Mahamed, the former Director General of the Private Security Regulatory Authority (PSRA), has invariably been profiled as rabble-rouser.
But that is because he has always been viewed through a political lens — and rightly so. In the past 12 years, he has made a living in a political environment.
Lately, he has been shifting to an economic environment and so would love to be viewed through an economic lens. Fazul says that if you use an economic lens, the 'rabble-rouser' becomes a 'disruptor.'
And he would like to disrupt the private security industry, which is why he says he has come up with something akin to a guard hailing app, that he believes will disrupt this area as Uber rattled the traditional taxi business. The app cuts out middlemen, connecting clients directly with security guards.
Until July 2024 when Fazul had been at the helm of PSRA, he strove to streamline the private security market by pushing for Sh30,0000 minimum wage and decent working conditions for the guards.
He believes they made some strides, but the work is far from complete. He now wants to do away with the last pockets of resistance.
He reckons the new digital platform will cure what for a while has looked like an incorrigible problem: ensuring that guards get Sh30,000 minimum monthly salary.
The platform has already onboarded 800,000 security guards, with a goal of surpassing 1.3 million, it is on course to become the single largest employer outside the government.
A legal notice published on November 21, 2023, set the minimum monthly wage for private security guards at Sh30,000 before statutory deductions.
In a landmark ruling, the High Court upheld this minimum wage, affirming the rights of security guards to fair remuneration. However, according to Fazul, the majority of security guards continue to be overworked and underpaid despite this legal mandate.
“This is what necessitated us to come up with this platform,” says Fazul, noting that currently, security firms are charging clients between Sh40,000 to Sh100,000 for a guard. The guard’s monthly earning, he says, is not anywhere near this figure.
This is what drove him and his team to come up with a digital platform which will link those in need of security services to security personnel. “This way, the client will not feel over-charged and the guard under-paid.”
With the new platform, customers will pay between Sh800 and Sh900 for security services per day, down from the current rate of around Sh1,500.
He reckons this app, which rides on the sharing economy, or gig economy, like Uber or Airbnb, will be highly disruptive like Safaricom’s decision to charge customers only when they make a call, that is billing per second as opposed to per minute. Similarly, customers will pay for security guards on a need basis.
In addition to the current pool of qualified private security guards, totaling around 1,300,000, Fazul intends to also recruit from the pool of thousands of young people who graduate from the National Youth Service (NYS) with some security training.
The elephant in the room is on how to ensure quality assurance on this platform. But this is not giving Fazul sleepless nights: “This is a highly regulated space. Whoever is on-boarded has to meet all the security clearances. Because, you cannot be a source of insecurity and providing security.”
He says it is a requirement that before a guard is licensed, they undergo security training and screening by PSRA. Should a guard be liable for a crime, they will be blacklisted and locked out of the next assignment.
Currently, because companies have refused to co-operate, a guard who commits a crime in one company can easily switch to another.
All the guards on the platform will have a unique identifier, which can be used to pull every professional detail about the security guards, including the KRA Pin, certificate of good conduct and the rest.
“Just in case there is a problem, we are able to walk backwards,” said Fazul.
According to Fazul, the platform has the potential to facilitate transactions exceeding one billion dollars in revenue.
“This is not just a better way of doing security, it is the only way that makes sense in the 21st century. The old system is obsolete. The future is here,” he says.
The guards on the platform will also be expected to be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge that he would require to offer such services.
The philosophy underpinning this invention is the sharing economy or the gig economy; a system that allows people to earn money by offering services, goods, or on-demand work. It's also known as the gig economy or access economy.
People can use a digital platform, like an app or website, to request tasks they need done, and workers can choose the jobs they want to do for payment.
The ride sharing economy has permeated the various economic sectors. Under the personal services there are platforms like Graphic design, or odd jobs like Airtasker, Expert360, Freelancer, Upwork, Sidekicker, Helpling, Hipages, Mad Paws, and Wipehero.
In hospitality, people with an extra house can use it for short-term rental on Airbnb. In transportation, those with an extra car that they would normally leave at home can convert it into a taxi and join such platforms as Uber or Bolt.
But it is in the entertainment sector that the gig economy has dominated. There is Netflix for streaming movies, Amazon Library for books or Spotify for streaming music.
Recent developments in private security entail buying so many services together. This means that besides paying for a guard, a client can also pay for alarm response, CCTV and emergency evacuation.
Fazul says that even in the current scenario, private companies sell different services separately.
Moreover, they will aggregate all the other security services on the platform, so that when a client dials for alarm response, it is not the contracted company that will respond, but the nearest one.
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