Leah So­rias

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert dis­missed claims yes­ter­day by the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion that he on­ly cared about com­mu­ni­ties and not the wel­fare of po­lice of­fi­cers. Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence held at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spai­in, Philbert said he was con­cerned for the en­tire pop­u­la­tion, even his of­fi­cers. "I hold a pas­sion for my com­mu­ni­ties and I hold the same pas­sion for po­lice of­fi­cers," he said.

At a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, act­ing sec­re­tary of the as­so­ci­a­tion John Fred­er­ick said 70 to 80 per cent of mem­bers felt that Philbert was un­car­ing to their plight. He said al­though the as­so­ci­a­tion met with Philbert on three oc­ca­sions this year to high­light their con­cerns, there has been no ac­tion to help them. Fred­er­ick added that if their con­cerns were not met, of­fi­cers would not sup­port the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in No­vem­ber, and would cut their work hours to 40 hours per week from 48 hours.

But Philbert yes­ter­day urged of­fi­cers to "rise to the oc­ca­sion." "This is not a time to tell the pub­lic that you are not work­ing," he said. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mau­rice Pig­gott, in re­spond­ing to claims by Fred­er­ick that no pro­mo­tions were held since Sep­tem­ber last year, said just a few weeks ago ten of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed to the rank of in­spec­tor. "I don't know where they got that in­for­ma­tion from but what I am telling you are facts," he said.

He not­ed that there were sev­er­al mat­ters in court put for­ward by the as­so­ci­a­tion and that put a halt to fur­ther pro­mo­tions. "Un­less these mat­ters are set­tled, we can­not have any pro­mo­tions," Pig­gott said. Fred­er­ick said on Wednes­day that all Spe­cial Re­serve Of­fi­cers (SRP's) re­ceived a mes­sage that they would now work 17 tours and their salaries would by re­duced from $4,700 to $1,600. This, Pig­gott said, was in­ac­cu­rate.

He said in keep­ing with cab­i­net min­utes and in­struc­tions, the SRP's had to un­der­go an ex­am­i­na­tion process and those who met the cri­te­ria were ab­sorbed in the Ser­vice. Out of the 500 SRP's, he said, 79 of them "did not make the grade" and were re­vert­ed to work­ing their 17 tours. Philbert said some these of­fi­cers were com­put­er lit­er­ate and were ex­pect­ed to be em­ployed as da­ta en­try clerks while at the same time per­form­ing their SRP du­ties.