Faizel Patterson
The recent implementation of a new national minimum wage for the security industry is, without question, a welcome and necessary step towards social justice for some of our nation’s most essential workers. Both employers and employees agree that better pay is a shared goal. However, the public discourse surrounding its implementation has been dangerously simplistic, ignoring a complex economic reality that, if mishandled, could trigger the very crisis it seeks to prevent: mass unemployment.
Approving a wage increase is easy. To implement it sustainably is hard. The inconvenient truth is that for any service-based company, from security to cleaning to catering, wages are not paid out of thin air; they are paid from the revenue generated by client contracts. These contracts have fixed terms and fixed rates. A sudden, legally mandated wage increase cannot be absorbed overnight without a corresponding increase in client fees. Forcing companies to pay wages they are not yet earning from contracts is a direct path to bankruptcy.
This is not a theoretical problem. This is a mathematical certainty. The responsible, legal, and logical solution – the one that compliant companies are pursuing in consultation with the Labour Commissioner’s office – is a phased rollout.
As client contracts come up for renewal, they are renegotiated at new rates that account for the new wage structure. This strategic alignment ensures that wage increases are funded and sustainable. To attack this responsible approach is to demand the impossible.
And the consequences of demanding the impossible are dire. Let us be clear about what is at stake.
According to the Namibia Statistics Agency 2023 Labour Force Survey, the country is grappling with a staggering unemployment rate of 36.9%, which balloons to 54.8% when you include discouraged jobseekers.
For our youth, the picture is even bleaker, with a 44.4% unemployment rate. In this context, is it wise to create a policy environment that encourages mass retrenchment? Forcing hundreds of security companies into immediate, unfunded compliance would not lead to better-paid guards; it would lead to thousands more guards joining the ranks of the unemployed. For a largely unskilled workforce, the prospect of finding alternative employment is slim.
This entire debate is occurring within a broken system. The private security industry is a chaotic, unregulated jungle. For an astonishing 28 years, the Security Enterprises and Security Officers Act of 1998 has existed on paper, but the critical regulations needed to give it teeth have never been implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety, and Security.
What does this failure of governance mean in practice? It means:
- No mandatory licensing standards for companies
- No proper vetting or background checks for guards, allowing criminals to enter a fragile system
- No oversight on weapons handling or training accreditation
- No effective system for monitoring compliance or taking disciplinary action
This regulatory vacuum is the root cause of the industry’s problems. It allows unscrupulous operators to thrive. The Public Service Union of Namibia (PSUN) itself has stated that any company bidding for tenders below N$30.30 per hour cannot possibly meet all its statutory obligations, which include not just wages but PAYE, social security, and leave benefits. Yet, non-compliant firms continue to win contracts, undercutting the compliant businesses that are trying to do the right thing.
Into this vacuum have stepped predatory actors. Unregulated “HR consultants” and labour brokers exploit desperate jobseekers, illegally charging them placement fees – a practice explicitly forbidden by Section 25 of the Employment Services Act of 2011. These brokers often make a huge cut out of the worker’s pay, with some workers reporting they receive as little as 30% of the amount the client actually pays for their services.
It is a bitter irony that the media spotlight often falls on compliant, tax-paying companies attempting a responsible, phased implementation, while the real culprits are ignored: the companies that flagrantly disregard the law, the labour brokers who exploit workers, and the government’s own failure to regulate the industry for nearly three decades.
We must elevate this conversation. The goal is not to fight the minimum wage but to implement it without collapsing an entire sector and exacerbating our national unemployment crisis. A responsible path forward requires a three-pronged approach:
Support phased implementation.
Acknowledge that a phased rollout aligned with client contract renewals is the only viable path for compliant businesses.
Regulate the industry.
Demand that the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety, and Security immediately gazette and enforce the regulations for the 1998 Security Act. This will level the playing field and weed out the bad actors.
Enforce existing laws.
Crack down on the illegal charging of placement fees by employment agencies and the exploitative practices of labour brokers.
Let us focus our collective energy on fixing the broken system, not on punishing the few who are trying to navigate it responsibly. The alternative is a pyrrhic victory: a higher minimum wage on paper, but thousands more Namibians with no wage at all.
* Faizel Patterson is the founder and owner of Central Knights Security, a Namibian private security firm with operations across various sectors.
