Shal­iza Has­sanali

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter three months of be­ing as­signed to se­cu­ri­ty du­ties, Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers of the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad (PLS) are back on track in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

The move comes hours af­ter a May 6 Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle head­lined “Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad Side­tracked.”

The ar­ti­cle high­light­ed that the PLS had been re­as­signed to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries projects from the be­gin­ning of this year.

Es­tab­lished in 2013, the PLS was set up to pro­tect farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties from crim­i­nals.

How­ev­er, the squad’s lack of vis­i­ble pres­ence on the ground led to thieves cart­ing away valu­able crops and live­stock, forc­ing farm­ers to fork out thou­sands of dol­lars to hire pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to safe­guard their fields.

This new work arrange­ment de­mo­ti­vat­ed and frus­trat­ed of­fi­cers of the Carlsen Field Po­lice Sta­tion, who boy­cotted their du­ties on Car­ni­val Tues­day, while oth­ers called in sick.

A dozen of­fi­cers al­so signed up to join the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo.

“This is not what we have signed up for,” one of­fi­cer com­plained.

Last Mon­day, the of­fi­cers were in­formed in a What­sApp mes­sage that the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary had ap­proved the ad­di­tion­al cov­er­age for day­time se­cu­ri­ty “sev­en days a week” as well as “the re­as­sign­ment of an­oth­er un­armed of­fi­cer from its Head Of­fice.”

The mes­sage stat­ed, “With this new arrange­ment, the PLS can now be re­moved from the site to re­sume reg­u­lar du­ties.”

The of­fi­cers thanked the Sun­day Guardian for air­ing their con­cerns and the min­istry’s swift re­sponse to put them back in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

“Good sense has fi­nal­ly pre­vailed,” one of­fi­cer said.