Ministry of Education terminates contracts of small security services

Sep 05, 2018 News

Several members of the small Security Services Association are contending that they are being discriminated against by the Ministry of Education after their contracts to provide security to a number of city schools were unanimously terminated.
Kaieteur News was visited by representatives of various small security service providers who were of the opinion that they were discriminated against.
On August 7th, the Department of Education had served Termination letters to Clinton’s Security Service, Sanjay Sancharra’s Security Service, Fortress Security Service, and other affiliated security services represented by the Association, notifying them that many of their contracts would be scrapped in 2019.
But on Monday, at the start of the new school term, at different locations, a ground battle ensued between guards of the security services and guards from a major, well known security company who all turned out to work at many of the same sites.
The guards at the affected sites were left flummoxed since in the termination letters seen by this publication their jobs were secured until 2019.
The security association said that their roughly 400-500 employees’ livelihood are in limbo.
Clearly printed in the termination letters was the Ministry of Education’s decision to forego the services of the small security firms and, instead, have contracts awarded through the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board.
An official in the Procurement Unit of the Education Ministry said that many of the small security service contracts, which the firms enjoyed for many years, were awarded by the schools and not the Ministry and that a decision was made to sever ties with small security services in favor of a fairer, open process.
In relation to the reported confusion between competing security firms at various sites, the official said that this was as a result of a misprint in the letters that had been distributed to the new contract awardee.
He said this was subsequently corrected.
The Small Security Service Association said that they will be joining the teachers on the picket line today to register their dissatisfaction with the Ministry of Education over this latest development.

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