Good afternoon. In a country with as much petty crime as Mozambique, valuables must be guarded. Security guards are used to protect all manner of assets, from the townhouses of the better-off to fleets of lorries parked up in the countryside, which are liable to have their fuel siphoned off and their batteries removed if left unattended. Small wonder that the private security industry has mushroomed in Mozambique. In the absence of official figures, it is estimated to employ about 100,000 people across some 600 companies, according to a senior industry source speaking to Zitamar News. One in every 350 or so people works in it.
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This sector operates with very little state oversight. The fact that many of them do not pay social security contributions (see below) is only one of the problems. A significant number of security firms are not even licensed, do not operate within the law, are not necessarily properly insured and, outside the capital Maputo, do not pay the minimum wage, thanks to a lack of scrutiny from the authorities in the provinces. Even multinational companies are happy to employ unlicensed security firms.
