Sev­er­al dis­grun­tled mem­bers of the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad in­tend to in­ten­si­fy their work stop­page ac­tion un­til they get a meet­ing with Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein. 

The of­fi­cers made the threat in a re­lease is­sued on Sun­day. 

“Of­fi­cers are will­ing to re­sume full du­ties and the soon­er the Min­is­ter meets with them, the soon­er they can,” the re­lease said. 

The group claimed that it was aware that Ho­sein met with se­nior of­fi­cers of the unit as­signed to his min­istry, last Wednes­day af­ter they (the group) threat­ened to file a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over their con­cerns in­clud­ing the pro­mo­tion of four ju­nior of­fi­cers. 

It said that the meet­ing be­tween Ho­sein, the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, and the Su­per­in­ten­dent and As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of the unit did noth­ing to al­le­vi­ate their con­cerns as they claimed that the man­age­ment of the unit by the se­nior of­fi­cers was “part of the prob­lem”. 

“The of­fi­cers be­lieve that the Su­per­in­ten­dent and As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent have not ad­e­quate­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed to the min­is­ter the re­al is­sues,” the re­lease said.

It claimed that at the meet­ing, the se­nior of­fi­cers rec­om­mend­ed the ter­mi­na­tion of some of the group as they were iden­ti­fied as “trou­ble­mak­ers”. 

“The of­fi­cers iden­ti­fied have a track record of ser­vice, cur­rent­ly in­volved in sev­er­al mat­ters be­fore the court, hav­ing ar­rest­ed a num­ber of per­sons for prae­di­al lar­ce­ny of­fences. They are al­so en­gaged in ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” the group said, as they claimed that they were be­ing tar­get­ed for speak­ing out over work­ing con­di­tions and al­leged wrong­do­ing by ad­min­is­tra­tors. 

The group not­ed that two weeks ago, of­fi­cers re­fused to be re­lo­cat­ed from their El Car­men of­fice to a build­ing at Farm Road in St Joseph. 

“The move was back­ward as the build­ing is shared with civil­ians and has no bath­room fa­cil­i­ties,” the re­lease said. 

While be­ing in­ter­viewed by Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Bar­rack­pore farmer Sardi­s­ai Sir­ju, who is a re­tired mem­ber of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, lament­ed the trans­fer of hard-work­ing of­fi­cers from the unit as­signed to the area.  

Sir­ju, who ad­mit­ted that he was the vic­tim of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny twice be­fore, claimed that of­fi­cers of the unit helped re­cov­er his stolen goats. 

“I am of the opin­ion that the per­son who is do­ing these trans­fers is work­ing with the crim­i­nals be­cause if some­one is as­sist­ing farm­ers and you mov­ing he out of there,” Sir­ju said. 

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­ture Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) Farm­ers’ Mar­ket in Morgua on Sat­ur­day, Ho­sein said that is­sues with­in the unit were be­ing con­sid­ered and would be ad­dressed. 

“We are work­ing on it and how to deal with the prob­lems,” Ho­sein said, as he called for pa­tience. 

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS