Companies offering private security services have embarked on using a digital application, to better monitor field activities, as well as following the alertness of their staff on duty.
The new innovation called “Base Guard” can be accessed as an application on a mobile phone, and also as a web page on a computer, can be used by the client, the guard, the company, and also has interface with the police.
Grace Matsiko, the chairperson of the Uganda Private Security Association, says that private security service is a multi- disciplinary sector like any other, employing over 60,000 personnel, most being guards. But others categories are also involved.
According to Matsiko, because of these numbers, management of these companies as well as professionalizing and standardizing the service, they encounter a lot of challenges which the system is out to address.
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Matsiko adds that this is application is used to deploy and know the placements of the guards; it can be used to supervise them to establish their level of alertness. The same application helps in information management of the operations in the sector.
“It can tell how many guards we have waiting,” Matsiko explained. “The application is also able to reconcile on different things with the customers, like on accounts, on records, and receipts, as well as doing firearms and weapon management. It also observes how the different companies are remitting their worker’s NSSF payments, and also tax compliance. The application is supposed to receive information from the public as well.”
About the recent attacks on private security guards, and the crimes committed by the guards themselves using their weapons, Matsiko says that the application is going to be the first layer of protection to both the guards and the public they deployed in.
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According to Ronald Kwesiga the director Sail Global Company, which built this application, says that the system is built to bring more accountability from all responsible parties.
“Security is more about accountability,” explains Kwesiga. “If some does what they are supposed to do at the rights time in the right place, the vigilance is higher. For example, once somebody posted in a specific place is attacked, police are now more involved, if an incident is reported, on the side of the police on their dashboard they are able to see the nearest armed person who can either come into counter, and to know whether the person is armed or not.”
According to him, this system allows clients who consume the private security services, to be involved in the observance, attentiveness and communication about the services they receive, and real time updates on what taking place at their premises which has not been the case.
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“The sense of accountability enhances the quality of service that people give, if somebody knows that the client can account for the service they have offered, they are committed, unlike them waiting for a supervisor who shows up and once is gone, they also go into their own business,” he adds.
Charles Ssebambulidde, the commissioner for Private Security Organizations and firearms in the Uganda police force, says this system will help to effectively manage the private security sector, as well as the performance of the manpower in there.
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