Special Treatment?

Ponders SG

From today's Straits Times,

it seems certain company's have immunity from the law.

So let's say Temasek Holdings owns a few hawker stalls, does it mean it will always receive "A" cleaniness grade?

Oct 27, 2006
Cisco drops from A to B in tougher grading scheme
Regulator says staff's forgery case didn't affect grading; attrition to blame, says firm
By Ben Nadarajan
TRAINING IN PROGRESS: A Cisco spokesman said the company has improved its supervisor-to-guard ratio and this has lowered its attrition rate by half.

THE big guns in the security business, Cisco, scored a surprise B in a tougher, new grading exercise for Singapore's 272 security agencies.

The Straits Times knows of at least four agencies which received A grades this year.

Cisco, a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings, had scored As in past gradings, which were less rigorous than the latest ranking.

A Cisco spokesman explained that the B grade was caused by a high attrition rate among its guards.

The company has improved its supervisor-to-guard ratio and this has enabled better interaction with their officers on the ground and lowered its attrition rate by half, said the spokesman.

On their part, industry players told The Straits Times the lower grade could have been due to a forgery case involving a Cisco employee. In August, a 25-year-old administrative officer was jailed 18 weeks for forging approval letters from the police's licensing department for 11 Cisco guards.

But the Security Industry Regulatory Department (SIRD), which is part of the police force, said this case had not affected Cisco's grading.

Also, unlike in previous court cases, the company was not charged together with its employee for that offence.

Industry players say the regulator had made clear to them in the past that a security company's owners had to be responsible for the actions of their staff.

The director of a security firm, who has been in the business for 15 years, noted that in past cases where an employee flouted the law, the company owners were also charged.

Under the Private Investigation and Security Agencies Act, company directors are liable for prosecution unless they can prove that the offence was committed without their consent and that they had conducted due diligence to prevent such an offence.

The police said Cisco was not charged as there was 'no evidence to suggest Cisco as a company was responsible for, or complicit in, the offence'.

The police spokesman also said an employee who commits offences 'in his own capacity' has to bear personal responsibility.

What has also left the industry perplexed is that any offence relating to deploying an unlicensed guard - as Cisco did with the 11 guards with false approvals - would usually mean an automatic D grade for the company.

But the police spokesman said a D grading was not mandatory and would depend on the number of offences and the severity of any breaches.

Another issue that has created ripples in the industry was the sudden reluctance by SIRD to post every company's latest grades online.

There has been widespread speculation in the industry that SIRD's sudden change of heart had to do with Cisco's surprise score.

But the police have made clear that the two matters are completely unrelated.

Its spokesman said the reason for not posting the grades online was that this was the first time the industry had been put through a comprehensive set of judging criteria.

'SIRD feels that there is value in further engaging the security agencies and buyers to seek their feedback on the pilot exercise, and review and revise the grading criteria to ensure that it is a more effective performance indicator,' the police spokesman said.

'This also gives the industry time and opportunity to upgrade their professionalism in tandem with the newly introduced security standards.'

In the past three years, grades were posted online under a much simpler scheme, which considered the percentage of trained guards employed by each firm.

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