Big bucks for po­lice?

While Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says his min­istry has re­leased ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to date, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says the TTPS has on­ly re­ceived mon­ey for salaries but not for goods and ser­vices.

“I’ve had to put all our projects on hold in or­der to pay bills to en­sure the po­lice ser­vice doesn’t be­come stag­nat­ed and shuts down. This is the ex­tent of how se­ri­ous it is,” Grif­fith told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter Im­bert’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment ear­li­er.

“There are hun­dreds of ven­dors await­ing pay­ment, there’s short­age of the meals which are sup­posed to be pro­vid­ed for pris­on­ers, land­lords who’ve rent­ed po­lice sta­tion build­ings to TTPS are threat­en­ing to evict po­lice for non-pay­ment of rent - it can all crip­ple TTPs’ ef­fec­tive­ness.”

Grif­fith clar­i­fied the sce­nario fac­ing the TTPS af­ter Im­bert spoke on the mon­ey is­sue in Par­lia­ment.

Im­bert was asked about the po­lice fund­ing is­sue by UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who sought rea­sons on the lack of time­ly dis­burse­ment of re­leas­es to the TTPS to en­sure im­ple­men­ta­tion of crit­i­cal crime fight­ing poli­cies and pro­grammes. Mooni­lal’s prob­ing fol­lowed dis­clo­sures made by TTPS of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Grif­fith, at a Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Thurs­day.

Among state­ments on Thurs­day, Grif­fith had said the TTPS was in debt of $47 mil­lion since it was still pay­ing bills from the 2017-2018 fis­cal year. He said TTPS has re­cur­ring ex­pen­di­ture and up to Thurs­day’s com­mit­tee meet­ing hadn’t re­ceived any­thing for fis­cal years 2018/2019, apart from salaries.

But re­ply­ing to Mooni­lal yes­ter­day, Im­bert said, “To date, the min­istry has re­leased ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion to the po­lice ser­vice. With ref­er­ence to goods and ser­vice, the Min­istry re­leased $99.9 mil­lion; for cur­rent trans­fers and sub­si­dies, $5.6 mil­lion; for mi­nor equip­ment pur­chas­es, $3.2 mil­lion; for a grand to­tal of $1 bil­lion and this doesn’t in­clude mon­ey ad­vanced to the TTPS un­der the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund for its projects.

“We in the min­istry will al­ways do what­ev­er is re­quired to as­sist the TT Po­lice Ser­vice to get its re­leas­es for its projects. We con­sid­er this to be one of our most ur­gent pri­or­i­ties and we work to­geth­er with the TTPS to pro­vide them with the funds they re­quire.”

Mooni­lal asked if Im­bert was aware that a sig­nif­i­cant part of the mon­ey pro­vid­ed went to pay bills for 2017-2018 and TTPS can­not pay TSTT bills, or land­lords of some sta­tions. He asked if Im­bert knew some of the project fund­ing has al­so gone to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and some of the projects that are crit­i­cal­ly need­ed at this time can be im­paired.

Im­bert told Mooni­lal, “No (not aware). That has all the hall­marks of fake news.”

Mooni­lal asked if Im­bert was con­clud­ing that the TTPS’ ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, who had giv­en the in­for­ma­tion to the Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee, was mis­lead­ing T&T.

Im­bert said, “I’m con­clud­ing no such thing. I want to re­it­er­ate: the Fi­nance Min­istry works hand in hand with the TTPS and we move with dis­patch to as­sist them and we’ll con­tin­ue to do so; they’re one of our most ur­gent pri­or­i­ties in terms of dis­burs­ments.

“Where there are is­sues with re­spect to pa­per­work, we as­sist them in com­plet­ing the pa­per­work and en­sure all sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion is in or­der. I want to re­it­er­ate the Fi­nance Min­istry con­sid­ers the TTPS one of its most ur­gent pri­or­i­ties in terms of the re­lease of funds.”

But Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith, dis­put­ing the sit­u­a­tion short­ly af­ter­wards, said 85 per cent of what was giv­en to TTPS by the Fi­nance Min­istry in this fis­cal year is based on salaries.

“And you can’t use salaries to pay bills,” Gri­fith said.

“My TTPS Head of Fi­nance told the Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee clear­ly on Thurs­day that we’re get­ting the re­quired fund­ing for salaries. What we haven’t got­ten is fund­ing to pay for goods and ser­vices. There’s a dif­fer­ence be­tween salaries, projects and goods and ser­vices. My staff has had decades of ex­pe­ri­ence. We did our jobs - but the funds weren’t giv­en to the TTPS.”

Grif­fith added,” Some $20 mil­lion was giv­en for spe­cial projects to im­prove the TTPS trans­for­ma­tion; the ma­jor­i­ty I had to use to pay out­stand­ing bills for the 2018/2019 pe­ri­od as we didn’t have funds. What lit­tle was giv­en to us had to pay bills for the 2017/2018 fis­cal year.”

The TTPS’ debts al­so in­clude for com­pa­nies that re­pair po­lice ve­hi­cles and pub­lic util­i­ty bills.

“But my hands are tied,” Grif­fith added.

“I how­ev­er re­main hope­ful the min­istry would ad­here to their oblig­a­tions in the very near fu­ture to have the rel­e­vant funds sub­mit­ted and I’ll do all that’s re­quired to en­sure TTPS’ ef­fec­tive­ness isn’t ham­pered, un­til that time.”

Im­bert didn’t re­spond to a texted query on the $1 bil­lion in fund­ing he al­lud­ed to giv­en Grif­fith’s re­but­tal.