Cherisse Moe

De­spite sick­out ac­tion by po­lice of­fi­cers over the past few weeks, of­fi­cers were out in their num­bers on Car­ni­val Tues­day to en­sure that the na­tion's se­cu­ri­ty went ac­cord­ing to plan. The of­fi­cers, who have been protest­ing the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer's (CPO) wage set­tle­ment of­fer of five per cent, had threat­ened to step up protest ac­tion if their de­mands were not met. Not­ing that the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ued to rise, the of­fi­cers have said they were not pre­pared to work over­time and would not re­turn to nor­mal du­ties un­til the CPO pre­sent­ed them with a bet­ter salary of­fer.

How­ev­er, the streets were not short of of­fi­cers and up to late yes­ter­day evening, there were no re­ports of vi­o­lence as the Pa­rade of the Bands pro­ceed­ed smooth­ly along South Quay, Port-of-Spain. Of­fi­cers were seen walk­ing through the bands as they crossed the stage and they were al­so on hand to en­sure that the large crowd was kept un­der con­trol, as thou­sands of lo­cal and for­eign spec­ta­tors came out to wit­ness T&T Car­ni­val, dubbed The Great­est Show on Earth.

An of­fi­cer who spoke to the T&T Guardian said al­though many had feared Car­ni­val would be af­fect­ed by the con­tin­ued protest ac­tion, that was not the case. "Every­thing is go­ing good," the of­fi­cer said. "We haven't seen any­thing out of the or­di­nary and we are here in case any­thing should hap­pen but so far, things are gong well. "Peo­ple are just en­joy­ing them­selves and tak­ing in the mas." Mean­while, in an in­ter­view, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was a mas­quer­ad­er in the band, Just Friends, al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the of­fi­cers for car­ry­ing out their du­ties, stat­ing that he was "very hap­py" to see them out on the road do­ing their job.