Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to meet with the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy. He said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. He did not give any de­tails.

And Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er to the PM Gary Grif­fith lat­er said no de­tails had been worked out for the meet­ing.

He said the date was yet to be de­ter­mined. He added that the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion had al­so sub­mit­ted a re­quest to meet with Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The meet­ing be­tween the PM and the po­lice as­so­ci­a­tion comes on the heels of sick­out ac­tion by protest­ing of­fi­cers. The pri­vate res­i­dences of the PM and Chief Jus­tice were left un­at­tend­ed by of­fi­cers who claimed they were ill. Sol­diers had to be called out to as­sume du­ties.

Grif­fith said based on what came out of the meet­ing be­tween the PM and po­lice, it would be de­ter­mined whether moves would be made to get an in­junc­tion to pre­vent a re­peat of such ac­tion. And Sandy said yes­ter­day that no ac­tion could be tak­en against the of­fi­cers, who are de­mand­ing in­creased salaries, be­cause they en­gaged in sick­out ac­tion. He said he was dis­ap­point­ed in their course of ac­tion and in­sist­ed that if he had the mon­ey re­quired to in­crease their salaries, he would pay them.

He said many of the po­lice of­fi­cers were hard-work­ing. Sandy said he has al­ways com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for their work pub­licly. "They are worth it, our of­fi­cers are worth it...So there is no way I will den­i­grate (of­fi­cers)," he said. He was re­spond­ing to re­ports which claimed that he de­scribed of­fi­cers as "slack­ers" and "lazy." He re­newed his call for the of­fi­cers to let good sense pre­vail and re­turn to work in the in­ter­est of na­tion­als and vis­i­tors alike. He ap­pealed to the of­fi­cers to re­con­sid­er their ac­tions.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ea­ger to speak with them and "I know some­thing good is go­ing to come out of it." Sandy again said the biggest prob­lem af­fect­ing the peo­ple of T&T was crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. "We need our po­lice of­fi­cers, we need our sol­diers-and I want to thank our sol­diers for com­ing up to the plate." Sandy said he hoped "there would not be an­oth­er oc­ca­sion that we'll have to ask them to come out." "That was not the cor­rect thing to do," he stressed. Asked to com­ment on the of­fi­cers who aban­doned their posts at the PM's res­i­dence in the wee hours of Tues­day morn­ing , Sandy said he had "ma­jor con­cerns" about it. He said in the mil­i­tary a sol­dier can­not quit his post un­less he was prop­er­ly re­lieved.