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Gambia
Wackenhut Security (Group 4)
November 28, 2005 Daily Observer
The two staff members of Wackenhut security firm, who were implicated in the
aborted groundnut theft at the Gambia Agricultural Marketing Company Ltd (Gamco)
a few months ago, were on Thursday arraigned before Magistrate Mboto of the
Banjul Magistrates' Court on a two-count charge of conspiracy to commit felony
and stealing.
Lagos
November 18, 2005 AllAfrica.com
DEPUTY controller of prisons (DCP) Ikoyi Prisons Lagos, Mr. Ralph Ikeh,
yesterday called for the establishment of private prisons in the country. He
argued that the private prisons among other benefits, would help generate
revenue for the owners as well as the government because people who would afford
the cost will like to be taken to such prisons where they will have enough
comfort similar to what is obtainable in some other parts of the world.
Malawi
Group 4
February 1, 2008 Daily Times
SOME of Standard Bank services have been negatively affected due to the on
going industrial action by Group 4 Securicor (G4S), the bank has announced. In a
statement published Thursday the bank says it has taken some measures to find
alternative means for the affected areas. “However, we have been assured by
Group 4 Securicor management that normal services will resume soon,” reads part
of the statement. The strike started Wednesday with guards demanding a 30
percent annual salary increment which management refused saying they could only
manage 12 percent. The court however, stopped the strike after management got an
injunction Tuesday evening and employees were told to go back to work on
Wednesday morning as the workers’ union also went to court to seek an injunction
which the court refused to grant them. According to The Daily Times
investigations G4S charges it clients K18, 834.45 for a guard on a 12 hour
shift. Those with an Malawi School Certificate of Education (equivalent of O
levels ), who are also known as commissioners, are at K29,412.83 while those
putting on Securicor Uniform are at K23,477.52. The investigations also revealed
that the rates customers pay for a Dog and Handler is K40, 632.32 and a
supervisor is at K23, 477.75 and the patrol and alarm guards are at K10, 161.87.
However despite netting so much money for the company the starting salary for a
guard is K3200 per month (K8 per hour) and those with more experience get about
K4000(K11 per hour).There is no guard who gets more than K20, 000. Government
has announced with effect from January this year a minimum wage of about K129
per day for those in town up from K87 and K95 in rural areas from K66. G4S is an
international company that has branches all over the world. In the United
Kingdom their guards do not get less than 5.68 pounds per hour (about K1,700) or
K40,000 per 24 hour shift.
September 4, 2007 The Daily Times
Ndirande Police have arrested seven people in connection with the theft of
assorted goods valued at over K500,000 on July 24 from Blantyre’s Superior
Hotel. Blantyre Police spokesperson Elizabeth Divala Monday said four of the
seven were security guards employed by Group 4 Securicor. The seven are Clifford
Chatha, 26, Benjamin Chipwete, 28, Dex Hamoni, 24, Mosses Wyson, 27, Lawrence
Ludechi, 19, Henry Nkamero, 26, and Mphatso Sigamba, 26. “The seven were
arrested on August 25 after some members of the public tipped the police of the
suspects’ whereabouts. “Our officers in Ndirande, acting on the tip raided the
suspects’ hideout. The seven appeared before Blantyre Magistrate last Thursday
and were remanded at Chichiri Maximum Prison waiting for trial”. Divala
explained that after stealing the goods the seven kept the entire loot
consisting of mattresses, Screens, blankets and telephone receivers at a safe
house in Ndirande. Divala said police recovered the stolen materials.
Mozambic
Group 4 (formerly Wackenhut)
November 10, 2007 All Africa
Mozambique's Administrative Tribunal has rejected an appeal by the
Mozambican branch of the security company Wackenhut, a wholly-owned subsidiary
of the London-based Group Four Securicor (G4S), against an order by the Labour
Ministry to pay over 11 years of overtime owing to its security guards. There is
no doubt about the substantive facts in the case. Wackenhut actually admitted
that between 1994 and 2005 it had not paid any overtime. Hundreds of Mozambican
guards had been working 12 hour shifts, four hours more than the standard eight
hour day. After repeated demands from its workers that the company pay what it
owed them, in 2005 Wackenhut agreed to send the overtime dispute to arbitration.
The arbitration panel gave its ruling on 2 May 2006, and declared that Wackenhut
did have to pay the overtime, though it added that the exact sum claimed by the
workers of 33.9 billion old meticais (about 1.3 million US dollars) had not been
proved. Wackenhut seized on this reservation as an excuse not to pay anything at
all. In late 2006, the Labour Ministry called Wackenhut to several meetings at
which it attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade the company to pay up. A note
from the General Inspectorate of Labour, sent on 25 August 2006, ordered
Wackenhut to pay the money within seven days. A second Labour Ministry note, of
30 August, warned Wackenhut that failure to comply could lead to the closure of
its operations in Mozambique. Wackenhut appealed against the Ministry's order to
the Administrative Tribunal, the body which deals with the legality of
administrative acts. The appeal was dated 7 January 2007. However, the law on
administrative disputes states that administrative acts must be appealed against
within 90 days. Since the Labour Ministry order was date 25 August 2006,
Wackenhut should have appealed by 25 November. The company's delay in taking any
action should have been sufficient for the Tribunal to throw the appeal out at
once. Nonetheless, the First Section of the Administrative Tribunal has now
delivered a lengthy verdict, dated 30 October. (This long delay is nothing
sinister - indeed, it is all too typical of Mozambican appeal procedures). The
appeal fell at the first hurdle: the Tribunal declared it had "no object" -
meaning that the decisions it was appealing against did not fall into the
category of "administrative acts" at all, and therefore did not fall under the
Administrative Tribunal's mandate. For the General Inspectorate of Labour could
not coerce Wackenhut into paying the money, and on its own had no power to
punish the company. To take the matter further, it needed to accuse Wackenhut of
the crime of disobedience, using the law courts. This, the Tribunal said, was "a
judicial, not an administrative procedure". In short, the Tribunal has told
Wackenhut that it was knocking on the wrong door, since the disputes do not fall
within the sphere of Administrative Law at all, but within that of Labour Law.
They should thus be judged by the ordinary law courts (which, in the absence of
specialised Labour Tribunals, handle disputes between workers and their
employers). Furthermore, the instructions from the Labour Ministry took the form
of mere "communications". The correct channel for appealing against a
communication from the General Inspectorate of Labour is to take the matter to
the Minister of Labour, the Tribunal pointed out. And since Wackenhut did not
contact the Minister within the ten days stipulated for such a move, it lost the
right to appeal. The Administrative Tribunal could have left matters there - but
it went much further, and accused Wackenhut of lying about the decision of the
arbitration panel. For while the arbitration ruling did decide that the workers'
figure was unproved, and while it did (unjustly, and arguably
unconstitutionally) say that only those still on the Wackenhut payroll were
entitled to the overtime pay, and not those who had left the company, it did not
give Wackenhut the right to pay whatever it liked. For the key arbitration
ruling, and one which Wackenhut ignored, was that, within ten days of the
arbitration decision, the Wackenhut management should have presented a proper
calculation of the overtime hours worked "based on the legal formula to be
provided by the Ministry of Labour". Wackenhut did not contact the Ministry to
seek this "legal formula", and it did not provide its own calculation of the
overtime worked between January 1994 and February 2005. Since Wackenhut had not
given the basis on which any other figure could be calculated, the Ministry then
thought it was entirely within its rights to demand that Wackenhut pay the 33.9
billion meticais. Or, as the Administrative Tribunal puts it, "the arbitration
decision gives the Labour Ministry the discretionary power to provide a basis
for calculating the payment of the overtime". This was the power that the
Ministry had used to order Wackenhut to pay up, and it could not be argued, as
the Wackenhut appeal claimed, that the Ministry lacked the power to make this
demand. The figure had not been conjured out of thin air. Initially, the workers
and their trade union committee had claimed a rather larger sum - 34.3 billion
meticais. This figure was submitted to a technical commission set up by the
arbitration panel. The three parties who had appointed the arbitrators (the
union committee, Wackenhut and the Ministry) also appointed the technicians. But
the two technicians appointed by Wackenhut did not collaborate, and Wackenhut
reneged on a promise to support the technical commission by providing it with
data, computers and office space. It was thus the technicians appointed by the
ministry and the union that revised the sum demanded downward. They excluded 42
employees who had not worked as guards, which reduced the sum owing to 33.9
billion meticais. Despite boycotting the technical commission, Wackenhut then
made its own proposal to the arbitrators. It said it was willing to pay
overtime, but only for the period February 2004 to February 2005, and only on
the assumption of two hours overtime per worker per day, which it calculated at
4.3 billion meticais. The union rejected this figure outright. At the end of the
arbitration, Wackenhut increased it to the round figure of five billion meticais
which it said the union could distribute as it saw fit. There is nothing secret
about any of this - it is all in the arbitration document, but you wouldn't
guess that from Wackenhut's public statements. Wackenhut's real problem was not
with the Labour Ministry, but with the Arbitration panel which delivered a
ruling it did not like. The company's response was to lie about that ruling, and
pretend it was implementing it, when in fact it refused to do what the Panel
ordered - namely to meet with the Ministry and fix a sum for the overtime to be
paid. Employers can appeal against arbitration - but not to the Administrative
Tribunal. Had Wackenhut wanted to overturn the arbitration ruling, its correct
course of action was to appeal to a civil section of an ordinary Maputo law
court.
October 10, 2007 All Africa
The Mozambican Labour Ministry has claimed that the security company Group
Four Securicor (G4S) has apologised for the bad relations between the government
and G4S in the past. According to a Ministry press release, the apology came
when the new manager of G4S's operations, Cassie van der Merwe (formerly head of
G4S in Zambia), met on Monday with Labour Minister Helena Taipo, the Deputy
Minister, Soares Nhaca, and the General Inspector of Labour, Joaquim Siuta. Van
der Merwe told the top leadership of the Ministry that he is well aware that G4S
has a bad reputation in Mozambique, and he apologised for 'the mistakes made in
the past'. He claimed that efforts are now being made to establish a good
working environment and labour justice in the company, and the first step
towards this was a collective agreement already reached with the local trade
union committee. The problems van der Merwe has inherited date from the time
when Jon Mortimer was general manager in Mozambique of Wackenhut, the US-based
security company that is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of G4S. Under Mortimer's
management, Wackenhut was involved in two acrimonious battles with its
workforce. One involved a refusal to pay overtime for no less than 11 years
(between 1994 and 2005), which led the Labour Inspectorate to demand that the
company pay its workers almost 34 billion old meticais (about 1.36 million US
dollars) for the unpaid overtime. Wackenhut refused to do so and took the issue
to court. In a separate dispute, Wackenhut sacked 300 security guards after the
US embassy decided not to renew its contract with Wackenhut in October 2006, but
failed to pay them the redundancy money to which they were entitled. Again the
Labour Inspetorate demanded that Wackenhut pay up, and again Wackenhut refused.
Mortimer gave a press conference in December 2006, at which he claimed the
Ministry had no power to give the company instructions. As for the money owed to
its workforce, Mortimer said that any worker who did not like the company's
decisions could take it to court. These public statements were too much for
Taipo, who cancelled Mortimer's work permit, declaring that his attitude had
contributed to the 'lack of stability' in Wackenhut's labour relations. Unable
to work in Mozambique any longer, Mortimer retreated to South Africa. According
to the Ministry's release, Taipo welcomed the new approach taken by van der
Merwe. She told him that the disturbed labour environment at Wackenhut had
arisen because the company failed to respect Mozambican legislation, which she
described as 'a fundamental condition for investment in the country'. She
stressed that her ministry 'is open to supporting companies that prioritise the
human factor, and promote labour justice as a contribution to social peace'. But
Taipo is not simply going to accept van der Merwe's word that matters have
improved in G4S. She recommended that the Labour Inspectorate visit the company
to check on the real situation there.
September 7, 2007 All Africa
The Mozambican Labour Ministry, through the Labour General Inspectorate, has
fined the multinational giant "G4S-Securicor Services Moçambique, Lda" with an
amount equivalent to 730 minimum statutory minimum wages in the country for
hiring nine illegal foreign workers. This follows a joint inspection carried out
by the Labour Ministry with the Mozambican Police, and the illegal workers were
suspended immediately from work. According to a press release from the Labour
Ministry received by AIM on Thursday, the fine amounts to 1,184,760 meticais
(about 46,000 USD), which is the maximum penalty provided for by the Mozambican
Labour Law. Current Labour Law states that any illegal worker should be
immediately suspended from their duties and the offender fined with a sum
equivalent from 10 up to 80 statutory minimum wages. The foreigner is suspended
until his situation is regularized. The current minimum wage in Mozambique is
equivalent to 63 USD. The illegal workers include Portuguese and South African
nationals holding positions of shift and project managers. In Mozambique, the
G4S subsidiary, Wackenhut, has also two separate disputes with its work force.
One of these concerns its failure to pay overtime for 11 years (1994-2005) and
the second is over unpaid severance pay for guards who were given notice after
the US Embassy refused to renew its contract with Wackenhut.
Uganda
Kampala, Africa
Group 4,
Securicor
November 18, 2006 New Vision
THIRTEEN security guards with Group 4 Security Service were on Friday
charged with stealing sh723.4m. They appeared at Buganda Road Court and were
remanded in Luzira Prison until November 30. They all denied the charge. Court
heard that Joseph Bosco Owenyi, John Sebunya, Alice Amiya and Vincent Langol on
October 15 stole sh124m which was being transferred from Barclays Bank, Luwum
Street to the main branch on Kampala Road. Court also heard that Clarkson Odong,
Richard Bidongo, David Wanyama, Edison Omule and David Karamagi stole sh160m
from Stanbic Bank which was in transit from Mityana to Bank of Uganda on October
11, 2006. State prosecutor Addah Atuhairwe told court that Standard Chartered
Bank lost sh344.4m which had been entrusted to Gideon Bwambale, Julius Muwanguzi
and Monica Osuu. The money was in transit from Standard Chartered Bank, William
Street branch on October 10. Atuhairwe said Martin Ocama stole sh95m which was
being carried to Bank of Uganda from Allied Bank in the old taxi park. Atuhairwe
said Police are still investigating the matter and asked court for time to
enable them complete their inquiries.
February 12, 2005 The Monitor
Since the Monday theft of Shs700 million that was in
transit from Stanbic bank, police has mounted a manhunt across the border into
Kenya and Tanzania. Police
suspect the Securicor Gray guards stole the money they were transporting in a
bullion van. This is the first heist involving a financial institution after a
long lull, and we can only hope it is not the tip of the robber's wedge. Unfortunately,
the private security firms that some banks hire to secure the money are proving
to be unreliable. Private security firms proliferated when the public lost
confidence in the ability of the regular police to secure their life and
property as the spate of crimes rose to unprecedented levels. The private
security firms filled the void by hiring former soldiers, paramilitaries, and
policemen without proper screening in some cases. We are now reaping the fruits
of this unsupervised recruitment. Early this year Police revealed that private
security organisations lead in commission of crimes among the security groups.
Of 187 cases of reported crimes that were committed by security organisations,
private security groups committed 100, police 44 cases, UPDF 36 and prisons one
case. They committed mainly murder by shooting, robbery, theft, corruption and
bribery. Police said it would improve on investigations into the operations of
private security organisations. Uganda
is not alone in this.
October 1, 2001
The director of operations in the Uganda Prisons Service, Mr. Moses Kakungulu,
has proposed that the execution of convicts be privatised if the death penalty
cannot be abolished. (New Vision/All African Global Media via COMTEX)
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