The club bouncers and security industry will be regulated and the Government was in the process of meeting people from the sector to better understand the situation, a Home Affairs’ Ministry spokesman said.
The Times has reported Joseph John Grech, director of Signal 8 Security, saying that the security industry was experiencing problems because it was unregulated.
At the moment, security companies can operate if they obtain a licence from the Police Commissioner but there is a lack of specific regulation.
As a result, Mr Grech said, tenders were being awarded to the cheapest bidder, which meant that companies placed bids at very low rates, resulting in precarious conditions.
Apart from that, he said, tender documents issued by private companies and the Government often requested bidders to quote a flat hourly rate without distinguishing between Sundays or public holidays.
Mr Grech, who has long been lobbying for the regulation of the sector, had also written to the previous Government making recommendations.
Among other things, he believes that a regulating body would be able to restore dignity to the industry.
It would outline the number of security officers needed for a particular job, classify different security guards, set minimum payment criteria and lead to a situation where companies competed on service quality and not price.
Kenneth Demartino, chairman of security company G4S, said that, at the moment, there was an “uneven playing field”.
The companies which respected their workforce and paid them decent rates were competing against others that bent the rules and placed very low bids, often underpaying employees.
He agreed that there was need to regulate the security sector irrespective of the format such regulation took.
Mr Demartino said he believed in self-regulation by, for example, setting up an association that would require companies to be registered and approved members to be able to operate.
Jesmond Bonello, president of the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin, said that perhaps it was time to look into regulation. At the moment, there was the Employment Relations Board that ought to regulate conditions of security officers but these had not been revised in many years.
Cory Greenland, section secretary at the General Workers’ Union, agreed with the need to improve the law.
“The law needs to be stronger and standards need to be set industry-wide. That way, all operators can face the same expenses when employing workers and maintain good standards. Then it is up to the enforcement wing to deliver and this has been lacking to this day…
“I am not against the concept of an authority regulating security per se, however, it would be important that discussions take place and one should also consider whether the authority could be a unit within another authority not have multiple regulators,” he said.