JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Po­lice of­fi­cers will now be cov­ered by COVID-19 in­sur­ance fol­low­ing an agree­ment be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Guardian Group.

At a news con­fer­ence out­side the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day, CEO Ravi Tewari said the group is ful­fill­ing its so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port the po­lice, es­pe­cial­ly at this time.

“The fight against crime is a na­tion­al ef­fort. It’s not just a po­lice ef­fort. It is not go­ing to be suc­cess­ful un­less the pub­lic of­fers sup­port and these are the kind of things that make it a lit­tle more com­fort­able for an al­ready un­com­fort­able job,” Tewari said.

Those cov­ered un­der the spe­cialised Guardian Life of the Caribbean plan will be en­ti­tled to $10,000 if they con­tract the virus.

Should they die, as a re­sult of COVID-19, their de­pen­dants will re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $25,000.

The cov­er­age pe­ri­od will be 12 months but will be sub­ject to re­view, de­pend­ing on how the COVID-19 is­sue de­vel­ops with­in that time.

Ac­cord­ing to the es­ti­mates giv­en by the com­pa­ny’s ac­tu­ar­ies, Tewari said, prospec­tive pay­outs for the plan will range be­tween $750,000, at the low end, to as much as $10,000,000 on the high end.

“This is the type of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and sup­port that we re­al­ly need. It will as­sist po­lice of­fi­cers. It may not pre­vent any­thing from hap­pen­ing, but it pro­vides a cush­ion. It can pro­vide some lev­el of sup­port should some­thing hap­pen to the of­fi­cers,” said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

At an es­ti­mat­ed cost be­tween $50,000 to $100,000 to the Guardian Group, the Po­lice Ser­vice will al­so be spon­sored 80 san­i­ta­tion sta­tions.

Grif­fith said a san­i­ta­tion sta­tion will be placed at each of the 77 po­lice sta­tions across the coun­try.

Grif­fith said he’s been pleased with the lev­el of sup­port of­fered to his of­fi­cers by the pri­vate sec­tor but he crit­i­cised those who have por­trayed the work of his of­fi­cers in a neg­a­tive light.

“It plays a very big part to lift morale. To lift mo­ti­va­tion. It doesn’t help when every­one crit­i­cis­es; at­tor­neys, ex-mag­is­trates, there are per­sons al­ways try­ing to con­demn and crit­i­cise mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice. These men and women are out there putting their lives on the line,” the com­mis­sion­er said.

Ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion sup­ports the work the ser­vice has been do­ing, he urged “arm­chair crit­ics” to stop try­ing to use every is­sue, big or small, to at­tack his hard-work­ing of­fi­cers.

In an­oth­er in­sur­ance-re­lat­ed is­sue, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­vealed that he’s seek­ing to make arrange­ments to per­mit dig­i­tal mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cates.

Say­ing he had re­ceived calls from sev­er­al in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tives about the is­sue, he said steps have be­gun to grant their re­quests.

“I have to get req­ui­site ap­proval from oth­er au­thor­i­ties, but that is be­ing done. So it is be­ing tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion,” Grif­fith said.

As things stand, the of­fices of some in­sur­ance com­pa­nies are closed, while many that are open are work­ing with re­duced staff ca­pac­i­ty, as a re­sult of COVID-19 pub­lic health mea­sure­ments.

This, in turn, has re­sult­ed in peo­ple with ex­pired in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cates be­ing un­able to col­lect new cer­tifi­cates.

The pro­posed dig­i­tal copy, once ap­proved, will al­low cer­tifi­cates to be emailed, or mailed, to clients.