Residents of HRC Professional Hub, a society in Vaibhav Khand, Indirapuram, are not happy with their security service. They said the guards were not police-verified, were often found sleeping on duty and even absent from their posts for entire shifts.
The matter has become so grave of late that the society’s AOA has had to hire additional security guards.
"Apart from being unprofessional, the GSIS [Gazelle Suffolk India Security] staff deployed in our society are also rude,” said Mohit Mishra, AOA president, HRC Professional Hub. “Despite sending several warning mails to their management over the past three weeks, the only response we have got is a threat that they will withdraw their services — that, too, when we stopped sending paycheques. They even had the audacity to ask us not to panic, as no untoward incident had taken place so far. Are we supposed to wait for something unfortunate to happen?"
According to the AOA members, the society requires 13 guards every day to man the gates. There are four guards at Gate 1 (the main entry) in the morning and three at night, two guards each for both morning and night shifts at the second gate (exit) and one guard each for both shifts at the third gate.
As per residents, however, out of the 13 guards, not even five turn up for their shifts.
Trouble started brewing a couple of months back, when a resident clicked this picture of a sleeping guard
"There have been several incidents of crime in nearby societies and we cannot sleep in peace knowing that the security guards are also probably sleeping," said a resident.
“The agency keeps changing guards and supervisors frequently,” said Mishra. “They have changed more than 20 guards in October itself. The deployed guards are also not verified by police. The agency failed to furnish their proof of verification, and has, since then, evaded the matter every time we have brought it up."
When contacted, Sonu Chaudhary, a supervisor of GSIS, said the AOA was unnecessarily trying to defame the security agency. "We have never denied them verification details," claimed Chaudhary.
The AOA had to hire additional security guards on the night of December 19 after noticing several guards absent from their posts. "I couldn't risk the security of the society any further and called in three guards from a known security agency," said Mishra.
However, Chaudhary refuted these claims and said the agency had already decided to withdraw services by December 25. “The society’s management went ahead and hired a new agency on the 19th,” he added.
He also said the agency had a payment discord with the society's AOA. "They withheld our payments for October and November and are refusing to pay," said a GSIS employee.
“Despite us having paid the security agency deployed prior to GSIS, they had not paid their guards," said Mishra. "The guards came to us for their payments. We didn't know what to do. This time, to make sure we don't go through that again, we want the agency to submit an acknowledgement from all guards stating that they have received their salaries."
In the meanwhile, the new security agency called "Clean and Secure" has been deployed for a three-month trial period.
