Cameras not to be installed without risk assessment – New security rules for factories, shopping malls, sports halls...

The new Law on Private Security and the accompanying bylaws have introduced many new features to the Serbian market. One of them is mandatory assessment of risk in personal protection and protection of property and business activities, which facilities such as big shopping malls, bus stations, factories, sports halls, but also water management, energy and transportation facilities, need to prepare by mid-December 2017 at the latest.

Without this document, which, as experts claim, will prove useful in the field of security and prevent them from irrational spending, legal persons risk paying a fine of up to half a million dinars.

The Government of Serbia adopted the Decree on more precise criteria for defining mandatorily secured facilities and the manner of protection in mid-December 2016, based on the Law on Private Security. The decree proscribes in which manner facilities need to be protected and provides a deadline period of one year for harmonization with its stipulations. The deadline expires on December 15, 2017.

What are mandatorily secured facilities?

As stated in Article 2 of the decree, mandatorily secured facilities are: 1 – energy, transportation, water management, industrial and environmental protection facilities; 2 – those facilities defined as structures of special importance for the defense of the country by a law, a special regulation or a decision; 3 – those defined as facilities of strategic or special importance; 4 – city facilities (local self-government units; 5 – halls and other facilities meant for gatherings with a capacity of over 5,000 people; 6 – open facilities and stadiums with a capacity of 20,000 people and more; 7 – shopping centers of open and closed type with 10,000 m2 and more; 8 – bus and railway station in cities with over 50,000 residents.

For each of these facilities, of which there are hundreds, measures of physical, technical and physical-technical protection have been defined. The fist step in implementing these measures is assessment of risk in the protection of persons, property and operations, as Slobodan Maksimovic, president of the Group for Technical Protection of the Association for Private Security of the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, reminds in his interview for eKapija.

The jobs of risk assessment and planning, according to the Law on Private Security, may be performed only by companies licensed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Maksimovic reminds.

He adds that it is important to emphasize that there is a difference between the assessment of risk in the protection of persons, property and operations and the assessment of risk in occupational safety protection, which is not identical and is not subject to the same law.

– Each legal person that owns mandatorily secured facilities stands to pay a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 dinars, as specified in Article 6 of the decree, in case of failure to produce a prepared assessment of risk in the protection of persons, property and operations after December 15.

Maksimovic adds that the same fine applies in case a legal person fails to periodically update the study of risk assessment (the decree envisages periodic updating in line with shifting internal and external conditions affecting the level of risk, and at least once in three years), in case of failure by the legal person to determine the person for carrying out organizational measures of protection in the facility and failure to take measures of facility protection.

Risk assessment leads to savings

However, risk assessment is not merely a legal obligation, a document merely preventing the legal person in possession of a secured facility from being penalized.

– The document has a preventive role primarily, that is, it lists all potential risks and dangers, but also a range of measures the implementation of which will diminish the consequences of harmful events and disastrous situations to the greatest extent possible. Those measures are preparation of protection plan, preparation of a project and, finally, the establishment of a system – Maksimovic concludes.

That this kind of risk assessment, carried out in line with a previously defined methodology equal for everybody, is beneficial, is also confirmed by Dr Zoran Kekovic, professor at the Faculty of Security Studies in Belgrade. Risk cannot be avoided, but can be reduced, and risk assessment is the first step to be made, he clarifies.

The adopted standard is not a result of local experience only, but of international experience as well, which, as our interviewee says, has been adapted for Serbia. Until now, risk assessments were either performed without a unified standard, “from case to case”, or not at all, in which case the implementation of protection measures was done immediately, Professor Kekovic adds.

– The new rules will have a positive economic effect as well. There will be no need to protect a facility from unlikely threats, to buy more technical equipment than needed, to hire more workers etc. Why invest too much if there's no need for it, if a smaller investment achieves results?

The business sector will thereby need to fully harmonize with the new law by the end of the year. Both investors and service providers are subject to this law. All these new obligations will lead to a raising of standards, both in employment and in the operations of companies from this field, as Mladen Raonic, development manager of Protecta Group, recently told our portal.

Banks subject to the law as well

Assessment of risk in the protection of persons, property and operations is mandatory for banks and other financial institutions as well. More precisely, the Decree on technical conditions for mandatory installation of technical protection systems in banks and other financial organizations says that technical protection is carried out based on the bylaw on assessment of risk in the protection of persons, property and operations. The bylaw is updated periodically in line with shifting internal and external conditions affecting the level of risk, at least once in three years. Nevertheless, banks have been given a deadline to adapt to new regulations by the end of the next year, Slobodan Maksimovic clarifies.

M.M.

Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova Republike Srbije

Privredna komora Srbije

Udruženje za privatno obezbeđenje PKS

Fakultet bezbednosti Beograd

Vlada Republike Srbije

Protecta group d.o.o. Beograd

Ministry of Internal Affairs

Group for Technical Protection

Law on Private Security

private security

Slobodan Maksimovic

Zoran Kekovic

Mladen Raonic

Decree on more precise criteria for defining mandatorily secured facilities and the manner of protection

Decree on mandatorily secured facilities

mandatorily secured facilities

assessment of risk in protection of persons

property and operations

mandatory risk assessment

assessment risk in occupational safety protection

surveillance cameras