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Two incidents of security guards being misbehaved with – by a woman lawyer at a Noida society earlier this month and a man at a Gurgaon condo earlier this week – have once again brought into spotlight a profession that is often at the receiving end of people’s aggression.
Security guards The Indian Express spoke to said a lack of options often pushes them to this job, despite knowing the hassles involved.
It has been about a year working as a security guard for Mohammad Harun Mansoori (35), a job he took up after the pandemic disrupted his earlier work in a manufacturing unit.
Mansoori, whose village is in Bihar’s Madhubani district, is also new to Delhi. Before this, he had lived almost his entire life in Mumbai where he says he had been working since he was 12 years old. He has done construction work and was most recently working a power loom in a manufacturing unit.
He says that after the pandemic struck, work at the powerloom unit became irregular. “It would be open for one week, then it would be closed for another week. It was not possible to run the household like that,” he said. Because of this, he decided to shift to Delhi to seek work as a security guard.
He earns Rs 9,000 a month working as a security in Jangpura, working seven days a week, every day of every month.
“If I take leave for any reason, Rs 300 is cut for every day missed. I earned better in Mumbai. When work was steady, I would make around Rs 14,000 per month. And work there was on my terms since I earned for every metre of cloth I produced, which is something I preferred. I felt like I had more control. But I had to decide to make this shift because of the disturbances… This is stable. At least I know that there will be work to go to everyday,” he said.
He works from 8 am to 8 pm every day, at his post at the gate of a building having both residential and office floors.
“I had to come to Delhi because Mumbai doesn’t have so many security guards like this in houses… Mumbai mein itna nahi chalta hai… There are people from my village working as guards in Delhi who told me that they could help me find work through an agency. So my wife came to Delhi last year with our four children to work as a domestic worker in houses in Nizamuddin, and one month later I joined her here,” he said.
Umesh Prasad, 56, came to Noida six months ago and has changed three jobs since, but not by choice. “I never leave on my own, they ask me to leave. They give excuses like I don’t work properly, or don’t open the gates on time, and then don’t pay me.” He sits under the shade of an arching tree in the relatively deserted street of Sector 27.
Prasad works at the D Block gate, where a long, open drain reeks all day. He is promised rupees 10,000 at the end of this month. He works 12 hours a day, from 8 am to 8 pm. “Not a single day is a holiday; if I take leave, they will cut my pay,” he says.
Prasad had been living in a “pakka makaan” with his family of five, in Satpura district of Bihar. He has three daughters who are married, and two sons. He did not work when he lived in his hometown. His wife had passed away in 2015, and since then he had been struggling to deal with the grief of her sudden passing.
This year, he decided to move to Noida because some distant relatives live here, and he needed to work. He now lives by himself in Atta Market.
He first worked at the C Block gate in Sector 27, then at an independent doctor’s clinic. Once he was fired from that job, he worked at the Brahmaputra market gate on the roadside. He was asked to leave in June after nearly working for a month, and says he was not paid his due salary.
Puttan, who only goes by the first name, is from Sitapur district in UP. He is in his 40s, he says, and has been working here for six months every year. Before Diwali, he goes back to his village to help during harvest season. “It’s not like I have to stay here my whole life,” says Puttan. He hopes to get back the same job when he returns.
He lives with his wife and two sons in Hoshiarpur. He came to Noida a year ago because one of his sons got a job here. During the pandemic he was here and working. He was being paid so he decided not to go back home.
Back home, he used to farm his land, and says he was “happy” there. One time, however, while repairing a motor engine, he fell and injured himself, permanently damaging his lower back. He cannot do strenuous physical activity anymore, so he sticks to this job. “The thing is, my body is weak, so I cannot pick up heavy loads,” says Puttan.
Puttan has been given a wooden table and chair, parked right outside the gate of a sprawling society in Noida’s Sector 50. He sits there from 8 am to 8 pm every day and maintains an extensive register of vehicles leaving and entering the society, with their precise time stamps. “If I need a leave, the whole day’s wages are cut, full 300 rupees,” he says. His monthly salary is Rs 9,000.
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