Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

While Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, says he is pleased with the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for the po­lice ser­vice, the heads of both fire and prison as­so­ci­a­tions say they are dis­ap­point­ed.

In his Bud­get speech yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­lo­cat­ed $6.912 bil­lion to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and fo­cused heav­i­ly on crime, men­tion­ing the de­cline in some se­ri­ous crimes and the need to fo­cus on fur­ther crime re­duc­tion.

One of the main promis­es by Im­bert was the in­tro­duc­tion of 1,000 new po­lice re­cruits for 2024, a tripling of the nor­mal in­take.

The Fire and Prison Ser­vices were on­ly men­tioned when he spoke of the unions that ac­cept­ed the four per cent wage in­crease.

“This is the first bud­get that has been favourable to the po­lice,” Dick­son said, adding that the achieve­ments men­tioned by Im­bert of a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime was in­dica­tive of the hard work by of­fi­cers, even with a man­pow­er short­age of 1,300.

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don, how­ev­er, said the lack of spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion to pris­ons was not sur­pris­ing.

“No ve­hi­cles, no fo­cus on im­prov­ing the prison in­fra­struc­ture, no talk about out­stand­ing over­time es­ti­mat­ed to be over $100 mil­lion, no uni­forms and equip­ment. The pub­lic de­serves bet­ter than this my­opic, the­atri­cal pre­sen­ta­tion,” Gor­don said.

For the next three years, the State, ac­cord­ing to its Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme, plans to in­vest $52.5 mil­lion in the con­struc­tion, main­te­nance and up­grade pro­grammes and projects of the prison ser­vice. There will al­so be an em­pha­sis on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ef­forts to pre­pare pris­on­ers for in­te­gra­tion in­to so­ci­ety.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the PSIP promised an in­vest­ment of $24.6 mil­lion for the ac­qui­si­tion of ve­hi­cles and equip­ment for the Ma­yaro, Pe­nal, Point Fortin and Arou­ca Fire Sta­tions.
A fur­ther $65 mil­lion will be re­quired to con­tin­ue con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin Fire Sta­tion and over the medi­um term, con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to com­mence on the Arou­ca and Bel­mont Fire Sta­tions.

The in­crease in the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers was some­thing for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith cham­pi­oned dur­ing his three-year term.

The in­crease will mean that the an­nu­al wage bill for the po­lice ser­vice will in­crease by $80 mil­lion.
Im­bert said an es­ti­mat­ed $90 mil­lion will be spent on four large in­spec­tion scan­ners that will be in­stalled at Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas and be­come op­er­a­tional next year.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, $4.5 mil­lion will be spent on ac­quir­ing 16 hand­held scan­ners for Cus­toms and Ex­cise work­ers.

In se­cur­ing the bor­ders, Im­bert said four naval ves­sels were do­nat­ed by the US to the Coast Guard. He added that $15 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to es­tab­lish the Coastal and River­ine Unit, an­oth­er idea of Grif­fith which was launched when the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion was opened in Ju­ly 2021.
The amount was for the de­sign and build­ing of a jet­ty and the pur­chase of ten fast and nim­ble in­shore ves­sels.

“An ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion to­talling $80 mil­lion has been in­clud­ed in 2024 for new ve­hi­cles and equip­ment for the po­lice. The ad­di­tion­al sum will al­low the po­lice to es­tab­lish and ex­pand more com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols,” Im­bert said.

Dick­son wel­comed the em­pha­sis placed on the TTPS.
“On pa­per, the bud­get was favourable to the po­lice.”