There Aren't Nearly Enough Guards For Cyprus Banks Tomorrow

UK-based security firm G4S will be guarding banks in Cyprus when they open tomorrow, the Telegraph reports.

You may remember the firm from last summer, when it received a $355 million contract for services at the London Olympics and failed to find and/or train enough people to fulfill that contract.

In the end the UK government ended up deploying 17,000 military personnel to London in a last minute bid to keep order, prompting the G4S CEO to explain to Parliament that the situation was a "humiliating shambles".

In Cyprus, G4S will be guarding branches of Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank and have apparently been working overnight to ensure cash machines are stocked.

However the firm is already running into problems — licensing rules have prevented the firm from hiring extra staff for the crisis.

"Demand is greater than we can provide... We haven't closed since the crisis started," John Arghyrou, managing director of the Cyprus business for G4S, told Reuters. "I've never seen anything like it in terms of what is going on from a security perspective. I would say the workload has quadrupled because the whole system has changed."

The company's Cyprus website is still looking for people to "become part of the G4S team".