Why your condo pays so much for a guard who earns so little

A condo buys twenty-four hours of someone being awake, and a guard can only sell about twelve of them. On my rough sums that explains most of the gap, and most of the fee does reach the guards, provided the overtime rules are being followed. That proviso is where I'd look.

The price I can't find in print

I couldn't find a published contract rate for a condo guard, so this whole post rests on one lobbying figure. In 2022, the president of the Security Industry Association of Malaysia told The Star that companies had to charge RM12 an hour to earn a 10% profit, with the minimum wage about to reach RM1,500.

That's a trade body arguing for a delay in a wage rise, so hold it loosely. But it's a number, and the minimum wage has since moved to RM1,700.

Scale the association's figure up in proportion and I get a little under fourteen ringgit an hour. A post that's never empty needs that for every hour of a thirty-day month, so my guess is about ten thousand ringgit a month, per post.

Say your condo has two gates and two hundred units. That's a hundred ringgit of every owner's monthly fee, gone before anyone has looked at the lift.

What a guard's month looks like on paper

Twelve-hour days aren't new. Guards in a 2015 Star report, one of them at a city-centre condo, described exactly that.

An accounting firm's summary of the overtime rules under the Employment Act gives me what I need. A monthly wage is divided by 26 for the daily rate, overtime pays at least one and a half times the hourly rate, and it's capped at 104 hours a month.⁴

Twenty-six days with four hours of overtime each lands exactly on that cap. I doubt that's a coincidence, though that's just my guess.

Run the minimum wage through it and a full month comes to about three thousand ringgit before deductions. The association floated RM3,000 itself in 2022, on a lower base.¹ I've left out rest days and public holidays, which pay more.

That's roughly ten ringgit for every hour at the gate, and a very long month to earn it.

A round-the-clock post takes a little over two guards once they've had their days off. So about seven thousand of that ten thousand goes on their pay.

One round-the-clock post for a month, my rough guess in ringgit

Where the other three thousand goes

Quite a lot of it is the law. Companies also pay EPF and Socso contributions, the association said in 2022, and provide uniforms, equipment and vehicles, and they may need supervisors and support staff.¹

The association said profits had been only 3% to 5% since the RM1,200 minimum, because the government and other clients wouldn't pay its RM9.50 an hour.¹ That's its own figure, and I can't check it.

Where a condo's guard fee goes, my rough guess

So I don't think the company in the middle is where the money vanishes. If my guess is close, it's a thin business that sells other people's hours. What would change my mind is one security company's real contract and payroll, side by side.

Why the price and the wage drift apart

The trouble is that the wage is set by law and the fee is set by a contract. In 2021 the association asked the government to update its contracts automatically when the minimum moves, because companies had to raise pay first and claim later.

Its example was a rise from RM1,100 to RM1,200. It said that doesn't cost a company RM100, because there are "other increases amounting to RM400" for overtime, EPF, Socso, insurance and the rest.²

Those complaints were about government contracts. I couldn't find anything on how condo contracts handle it, so this next part is my guess: a committee that signs a fixed price for two years has made the same bet, and only one side has to change its numbers mid-way.

When the sums stop adding up

The association also said a wage rise would bring in more groups offering lower rates.¹ If a rate falls below what the sums need, the only line big enough to give is the overtime.

That's my inference, but it's why one report caught my eye. In April 2025 the head of the Labour Department said an inspection of 35 security companies found some still paying "the old minimum wage rate of RM1,500 a month or RM2,000 including overtime".³

He didn't say how many companies, or how many hours sat behind that figure, so I can't tell you what those guards were working. Put it beside my three thousand, though, and I'd want to know.

I'm not suggesting a low quote means anyone is breaking a rule. I'm saying a committee is the only party in the room who can ask, and it's also the party who chose the low quote.