The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) has joined the call for chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Nizam Mo­hammed to be held ac­count­able for state­ments he made about the pauci­ty of East In­di­ans at the top ech­e­lons of the Po­lice Ser­vice. In a news re­lease, NJAC said Mo­hammed should be made to ac­count for his in­dis­cre­tion and the in­jury in­flict­ed on the pub­lic. It said Mo­hammed, who claimed there were more peo­ple of African de­scent in lead­er­ship po­si­tions in the Po­lice Ser­vice, as op­posed to their East In­di­an col­leagues, gave the im­pres­sion that there was dis­crim­i­na­tion against the East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion with re­gard to their en­try and their pro­mo­tions with­in the ser­vice.

NJAC said if Mo­hammed had giv­en the mat­ter some more thought, he would have recog­nised that there was al­ways a marked re­luc­tance of cer­tain sec­tors of pop­u­la­tion to join the Po­lice Ser­vice. It added that the Po­lice Ser­vice had suf­fered from that and at an ear­li­er time, a sub­stan­tial amount of po­lice­men had to be re­cruit­ed from neigh­bour­ing is­lands. Mo­hammed's be­hav­iour, NJAC said, does not speak well for the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of good com­mu­nal re­la­tions in T&T. There­fore, NJAC said, it was an ide­al time to cre­ate a na­tion­al body to in­ves­ti­gate all of the coun­try's in­sti­tu­tions, both pri­vate and pub­lic, in or­der to pro­gres­sive­ly elim­i­nate all and any man­i­fes­ta­tions of racial bias.