The robbery in Lahore of a Chinese national by her own private security guards sheds yet some more light on the important issue of regulation, or lack thereof, of this business.
The robbers tied their employer, a Chinese woman, and robbed her of some cash and valuables. Luckily, the police managed to trace the perpetrators and brought them to justice. That still won’t heal the trauma that victims have to deal with them for some time to come.
With the services of the state crumbling, and the private sector picking up the slack, specially to anyone and everyone who can afford it, we are faced with a set of problems. The rich have their own hospitals, their children go to private hospitals, they have their own power sources for their homes and, since they don’t trust the local police, they have their own security guards. Were they allowed their own courts, they would have even paid for those. (They already do, in a manner of speaking.)
There has been a slew of private security companies that have mushroomed across the country. Some of them have rather large head counts. One cannot call them militias but, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck….
Having private firms armed to the teeth and with little by way of vetting their armed employees, one can only expect things to go wrong. The incident with the Chinese national isn’t the first. There has been a litany of complaints against private security firms. This only happens to be one of the relatively rare instances where the guards attack their own employer.
On a tangent, but related nonetheless, the state should also look out for the welfare of these security guards as well. The polyester uniforms they wear in the muggy heat in this neck of the woods aren’t going to help keeping tempers down.
There needs to be comprehensive reform.
