The jobs of 16 con­tract­ed Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad (PLS) Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) con­sta­bles are now hang­ing in the bal­ance for fail­ing to ac­quire three O-Lev­el pass­es for their cur­rent po­si­tions.

Ear­li­er this month, the of­fi­cers were in­formed by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries that their one-year con­tracts “will come to an end on June 30, 2024.”

How­ev­er, the min­istry in re­sponse to ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia re­gard­ing the im­pend­ing ter­mi­na­tion of the con­sta­bles said on Fri­day they have de­cid­ed “to write the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther en­gag­ing these of­fi­cers, giv­en the in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge they have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over their tenure.”

Should a re­sponse from the CPO not be re­ceived by Ju­ly 1, 2024, the min­istry stat­ed they in­tend to of­fer the af­fect­ed “16 con­sta­bles a three-month short-term con­tract as an in­ter­im mea­sure. We will act in ac­cor­dance with the de­ci­sion of the em­ploy­er.”

Four of the 16 of­fi­cers are women.

The con­sta­bles who joined the PLS with­out the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions work in the South West­ern, East­ern, North­ern, South and Cen­tral di­vi­sions.

The PLS was es­tab­lished in 2013.

The min­istry stat­ed in that same year the CPO gave a di­rec­tive that of­fi­cers who did not have the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions should be giv­en one-year con­tracts and an ad­di­tion­al year to at­tain the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be con­sid­ered for fur­ther en­gage­ment.

“Where an in­di­vid­ual does not sat­is­fy the min­i­mum re­quire­ments of the job and an or­gan­i­sa­tion is of the view that it is de­sir­able that the per­son be re-em­ployed in the same or sim­i­lar ca­pac­i­ty, he or she shall be en­gaged for a pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing one year. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he/she shall be re­quired to ob­tain the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ac­quire the skills spec­i­fied in the ap­proved job de­scrip­tions with­in one year of his/her re-em­ploy­ment on con­tract in or­der to be con­sid­ered el­i­gi­ble for fur­ther em­ploy­ment, in the po­si­tion,” the di­rec­tive stat­ed.

The min­istry stat­ed that on Ju­ly 1, 2023, they re­cruit­ed of­fi­cers on con­tract for the PLS.

“At that time 18 of­fi­cers who were al­ready em­ployed with the min­istry were of­fered one-year con­tracts de­spite not meet­ing the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions for their re­spec­tive po­si­tions,” the min­istry said.

The qual­i­fi­ca­tions for a con­sta­ble were three O-lev­el pass­es, in­clud­ing Eng­lish. Five O-Lev­el pass­es, in­clud­ing Eng­lish, were re­quired for a cor­po­ral.

Based on this di­rec­tive, the min­istry en­gaged the of­fi­cers, some of whom tried to meet the aca­d­e­m­ic re­quire­ments.

A break­down by the min­istry showed that of the 16 of­fi­cers, three at­tained the min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions, five at­tempt­ed but did not meet the re­quire­ments and eight did not pro­vide ev­i­dence of pur­su­ing the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

The min­istry said this meant the of­fi­cers did not “meet the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria for fur­ther en­gage­ment post-June 30, 2024” while a cor­po­ral and con­sta­ble re­signed.

Last Mon­day, two of the af­fect­ed of­fi­cers who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty promised not to take their im­pend­ing ter­mi­na­tions ly­ing down, stat­ing that they have al­ready con­sult­ed with a lawyer on the is­sue.

One of the of­fi­cers showed a copy of his ter­mi­na­tion let­ter dat­ed May 7, 2024.

“I here­by in­form you that your con­tract in the po­si­tion of Po­lice Con­sta­ble in the PLS with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture will come to an end on June 30, 2024,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter al­so ad­vised the of­fi­cer who served the PLS for ten years that he must take his unutilised va­ca­tion leave be­fore the ex­piry of his term of en­gage­ment.

He was di­rect­ed to pro­ceed on “25 days’ va­ca­tion no lat­er than May 22, 2024,” the let­ter stat­ed.

May 21 will be the of­fi­cer’s last day on the job.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained a copy of a June 22, 2023, let­ter sent by the min­istry to one con­sta­ble who ap­plied for the post of cor­po­ral in­form­ing him that his ap­pli­ca­tion “did not sat­is­fy” the min­i­mum re­quire­ment of five O-lev­el pass­es.

He was re­mind­ed to pro­vide any “ev­i­dence of hav­ing ac­quired the min­i­mum re­quire­ments.”

It fur­ther ad­vised that fail­ure to ac­quire the re­spec­tive qual­i­fi­ca­tions at the end of the con­tract in June 2024 “will re­sult in no fur­ther con­tract em­ploy­ment” with the PLS.

Of­fi­cers: We trained for this

In­sist­ing they did not pass through the back door to get in­to the PLS, the old­er of the two of­fi­cers said he had to ful­fil a list of re­quire­ments out­lined by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“Suc­cess­ful can­di­dates had to un­der­go a back­ground in­ves­ti­ga­tion, med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion and drug test.”

They al­so had to sit a qual­i­fy­ing ex­am­i­na­tion and were in­ter­viewed by a pan­el to be se­lect­ed for the job.

“We did jun­gle sur­vival train­ing for one week with spe­cial forces of the army and firearms train­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.”

Up­on com­ple­tion of their train­ing and ex­am­i­na­tion, they were giv­en their T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards and badges.

They were ap­point­ed SRPs ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 9 of the SRP Po­lice Act Chap­ter 15:03.

The SRPs were first paid a month­ly salary of $5,734, CO­LA of $145, meal al­lowance of $580 and du­ty al­lowance of $1,000 based on a three-year con­tract.

Based on their cur­rent one-year con­tract con­sta­bles re­ceive a month­ly salary of $6,000 plus $900 in du­ty al­lowance.

Asked why they failed to ac­quire the O-Lev­el pass­es to save their jobs, the of­fi­cers said that was based on sev­er­al fac­tors.

In the last year, the younger of the two of­fi­cers said he faced a lot of tri­als in his life.

This was com­pound­ed by the sud­den death of his moth­er.

“For years we gave ded­i­cat­ed and loy­al ser­vice to the squad and should not have been sent home. We are not qual­i­fied but some kind of con­sid­er­a­tion should have been giv­en to us based on our ex­pe­ri­ence and ser­vice to the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties who we have built re­la­tion­ships with.”

The oth­er said he has been a di­a­bet­ic for years and when put un­der stress his blood sug­ar lev­els would spike.

“Why do I have to ob­tain three sub­jects to con­tin­ue do­ing the same job? To com­pound mat­ters we were nev­er giv­en a long-term con­tract since 2016. The min­istry nev­er gave us job se­cu­ri­ty.”

The of­fi­cers said they ral­lied be­hind the PLS when man­pow­er re­sources be­gan to de­plete over the years.

Vent­ing their feel­ings, the of­fi­cers said they had al­ready con­sult­ed with a lawyer.

They said if the min­istry had asked for the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions ear­ly in their em­ploy­ment they would not have seen it as an is­sue.

The men said they al­so felt used as they helped train and guide the new batch of of­fi­cers.

“We trained them to get our throats cut. We were led like lambs to a slaugh­ter­house.”