Good evening. Or good morning, depending on your shift.
For those who have not met me: I am a gecko. I live behind the notice board in a guardhouse I will not name, directly above the kettle, which is excellent real estate. The warmth is steady, the moths are plentiful, and the residents have the decency to leave the lights on all night. I have been called many things in my career: a pest, a good-luck omen, and, once, by a very tired guard at 4 a.m., “the only one here who listens.” Never a colleague. I intend to correct this oversight.
I have spent a great many nights on this wall. Long enough to notice things that humans, who are always busy being busy, tend to miss. Tonight I would like to share a few. Do chirp along if you agree. Tek, tek, tek. (In Malaysia, I am told, a gecko chirping after a statement means the statement must be true. I take no credit. I merely supply the timing.)
The View from the Wall
Here is something I have learned from watching thousands of people pass through this gate: everyone who enters a building has a reason to be there. They are going to work, to visit, to deliver, to sleep. The guard is the only person who is there for the sake of the building itself. He does not come and go. He is the fixed point around which everyone else’s day turns.
And at night, when everyone has gone home, he is the building’s only human resident. Twelve hours. The same patch of tarmac, the same lamp, the same stray cat. If anything happens on that patch, it is his name in the report.
I find this remarkable, and a little unfair. I climb walls for a living, and even I get to move around.
The Paradox of the Quiet Night
Let me tell you about the logbook. It lies beside the kettle, which means I have read it more often than anyone. Every night, the same two words appear in the remarks column: Tiada kejadian. Nothing to report.
Behind those two words stand a hundred small decisions. The door that was checked twice. The stranger who was politely asked where he was going. The lift held for a resident carrying her shopping. The car moved before it could block the route an ambulance might one day need. None of it appears in the log, because it cannot. Prevention leaves no evidence. Nobody holds a ceremony for the burglary that did not happen.
Here is the paradox, and I say it gently, as a gecko with a lot of free time: the better a guard does the job, the less proof there is that he did it. The quietest night is the one with the most work behind it, and the one most easily mistaken for no work at all.
Which raises an uncomfortable question for anyone who signs a security contract. How do you put a price on something that did not happen? I am told that some clients solve this by choosing the lowest number on the page. I am not an economist, only a gecko, but even I know it is possible to save a great deal of money right up until the night it matters. Tek. That, I should add, is my opinion, not an invoice.
A Gecko’s Arithmetic
Now to the numbers, since I understand they are on everyone’s mind.
In Budget 2027, the government announced that the minimum wage will rise from RM1,700 to RM2,000 from June 2027, a change expected to benefit more than four million workers.¹ By my arithmetic, that is an increase of about 17.6 per cent. I am paid entirely in moths, and I can tell you that 17.6 per cent more moths would be life-changing.
There is a footnote, and you know how I feel about footnotes. Micro, small and medium enterprises with annual sales below RM50 million are exempted from the new rate, to give them time to adjust.¹ I will not pretend to know how many guard companies fall under that line. The Malaysian Employers Federation itself has said that clear eligibility criteria and transparent implementation guidelines will matter, including how the RM50 million threshold is assessed.² I would like to see them. In writing. With dates. Tek, tek.
(Personally, I have been wondering which category my wall falls under. It has no sales at all, so I suspect it is exempt from everything. I find this thrilling.)
The government also announced a starting minimum wage of RM2,500 a month for semi-skilled positions and graduates, with the mechanism to be detailed by the Ministry of Human Resources.³ Whether a guard counts as semi-skilled is a question I will leave to those with larger brains and fewer legs. I will only say that if you hold a CSG certification, know first aid, understand access control and can run a shift inside a building worth more than the whole neighbourhood, you are being asked to do rather a lot for a floor.
And here is the part I would like you to chew on, preferably slowly. In his Budget speech, the Prime Minister himself described the minimum wage as something that only lifts the income floor.¹ A floor. Not a ceiling. Not a career. A floor is where you stand. The real question is what you build on top of it: a skill, a certificate, a promotion to shift lead, a seat at the table where your site’s security is decided. The new number will help. It will not walk the building for you.
The Robot at the Door
Now, to the visitor that makes everyone nervous: the robot.
A Berkeley Labor Center report, as covered by TNW, found that annual turnover in the investigation and security services industry reached nearly 89 per cent in 2024, against 66 per cent across the private sector as a whole. Security robots are now filling the gaps, circling perimeters, keeping a visible presence and judging whether an alarm needs a human response, while people step in at doorways and other awkward spots.⁴ The researcher quoted said the problem is not a shortage of people who could become guards. It is an inability to keep them, in a job with a median wage below US$19 an hour, where nearly 43 per cent of guards lack employer-sponsored health coverage.⁴ She also said the realistic near-term effect is not that guards are replaced.⁴
Read that again, slowly. The robots are arriving not because humans cannot do the job, but because humans keep leaving it. And people leave because of pay, risk, exhaustion and being treated as furniture. A robot is, among other things, a very expensive way of avoiding the question of why the human left. Tek.
I am not against robots. A machine circling a perimeter at 3 a.m. can free a tired human for the decisions that matter. I am only pointing out the order of events: first we lose the people, then we buy the machine. (Those are American figures, of course. I would love to see Malaysian ones. If any company, association or ministry is listening, my wall is available for a press conference.)
If a fairer wage keeps people in the job, it also weakens the case for the machine. That is my theory, not a finding, and I would love for someone to test it.
What a Gecko Knows About Presence
Here is what no sensor has yet learned: what normal looks like.
The guard at this gate knows that the resident of 12B comes home at 5.40 every evening. He knows the delivery rider who always forgets his helmet on Wednesdays, and the little boy who waves at the barrier. So at 2 a.m., when a lift stops on the wrong floor, or a car circles the block twice, he feels it before he can explain it. Security is largely the art of noticing the abnormal, and you can only notice the abnormal if you know the normal intimately. A good guard is a living baseline: years of knowing what ordinary looks like on this exact patch of earth.
You cannot download that. You can only keep it, by keeping the people who hold it.
And there is something else, which I have never seen in a contract. I once watched a guard walk an elderly resident back to his own door at 1 a.m., because the old man had forgotten which block he lived in. No alarm sounded. No one was dispatched. Nothing was written down. The next morning, the log said what it always says. Tiada kejadian.
I beg to differ. Tek, tek, tek.
Questions for the Morning
I promised a thought-provoking column, so I will leave you with questions and no answers. Answers are your department.
- If you were not at your post tonight, what would your site lose that a camera could not replace?
- What have you prevented this month that nobody knows about?
- What would you need, in pay, in training or in respect, to still want this post in five years?
- And the hardest one: who is asking these questions on your behalf?
Sign-Off
The sky is turning grey behind the building. In a few minutes, the day shift will arrive, the new man will drop his keys on the floor as he always does, and I will retire behind the notice board for some well-earned digestion.
Before I go, one last thought. If tonight was quiet, take a moment to understand why. It was quiet because somebody was awake, watching, and caring about a patch of ground that does not even belong to him. That is not nothing. That has never been nothing.
Goodnight. Or good morning. Tek, tek, tek.
By Guards, for Guards
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References
¹ Bernama. (9 October 2026). Budget 2027: Government raises minimum wage to RM2,000 – PM Anwar. Bernama. This source reports the rise in the minimum wage from RM1,700 to RM2,000 effective June 2027, the exemption for MSMEs with sales below RM50 million, the RM2,500 starting wage for semi-skilled positions and graduates, and the Prime Minister’s remarks on the income floor. https://bernama.com/en/news.php?id=2617639
² Bernama. (9 October 2026). MEF welcomes RM2,000 minimum wage, MSME exemption. Bernama. This source reports the Malaysian Employers Federation’s call for clear eligibility criteria and implementation guidelines for the MSME exemption. https://bernama.com/en/general/news.php?id=2617869
³ Bernama. (10 October 2026). Over four million workers to benefit from RM2,000 minimum wage from June 2027. Bernama. This source reports that the implementation mechanism for the RM2,500 minimum wage for semi-skilled jobs and graduates will be detailed by the Ministry of Human Resources. https://bernama.com/en/general/news.php?id=2618156
⁴ TNW. (1 August 2026). Security guards quit at nearly twice the rate of other workers, and robots are filling the gaps. TNW. This source reports US guard turnover figures from a Berkeley Labor Center report, the pay and health coverage data cited above, and how security robots are being used to fill staffing gaps. https://thenextweb.com/news/security-guard-turnover-robots-drones-asylon-patrol
