[imagesource: Thobile Mathonsi / African News Agency]
Head to the shops, or anywhere these days, really, and you’re likely to see a car guard offering to watch over your car.
There’s also the classic help you in and out of the parking bay hand-waving, and sometimes the muscle work of lugging your groceries to the car and loading them in the boot.
I know firsthand from watching out of my window that turf wars between car guards for control of lucrative streets are very much real.
Before we get into the rands and cents of it all, GroundUp wants to make some distinctions:
The Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA) says only registered security guards may guard cars. “Car guards” have therefore been rebranded as “customer trolley assistants”. For convenience, we will refer to the “customer assistants” as car guards.
Okay, so we’re sticking to the use of car guards for clarity’s sake.
As begrudgingly as you might hand over that R10 note (or shrug your shoulders and express remorse that you don’t have any cash on you), the same can be said for the money the car guard has to fork out just to be there:
…most shoppers do not know that in many cases the car guards pay for the “privilege” of being allowed to collect tips. And if the tips they collect that day fall below the daily “rent” – about R30 to R50 for a day shift, R15 to R25 for a night shift – they have to pay the shortfall from the next day’s earnings. And in many cases, if they take a day off, they still have to pay the fee.
At some malls, car guards may have to pay as much as R1 500 to R4 000 upfront to operate in the area.
They may also need to fork out for the uniform, which can be as much as R150 for the waistcoat and R250 for the jacket.
There’s no paid leave, there’s no Unemployment Insurance Fund, and if you don’t pay the daily fee somebody else is waiting to take your place.
In an interview GroundUp conducted with one car guard, he said, “if I do not pay to work, they will just get the next ou (person)”.
One set of car guards in Brackenfell estimated that they made around R3 000 a month, before paying the daily fee of R30 or more.
Research in Durban that profiled ten guards at a free-to-park shopping mall found they earned an average of R108 a day, out of which they paid R35 to the agent, leaving them with R73.
Car guards are often portrayed in a very negative light and most of us likely have firsthand experience of one (or many) being overly aggressive.
But for so many, it’s a chance to earn an honest living when there are few (or no) other options available.
Keep that in mind and you may not feel so miffed when you wind down the car window and hand over a few silver coins.
