RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired of­fi­cers who served at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) in Aripo are call­ing for a for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the use of funds al­lo­cat­ed to the fa­cil­i­ty, as they are still await­ing gra­tu­ity years af­ter com­plet­ing their con­tracts.

For­mer po­lice of­fi­cer John­son Gue­vara yes­ter­day said he and at least 38 oth­er re­tired of­fi­cers want an­swers on where the mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to the IDC went.

Gue­vara, who served 38 years in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice be­fore work­ing at the IDC be­tween 2020 and 2023, said nei­ther he nor col­league Earl Steven­son Grant—who be­gan work­ing at the cen­tre in 2015—had re­ceived gra­tu­ity.

He al­leged that de­spite a gra­tu­ity work­sheet be­ing pre­pared and au­dit­ed in 2024, no pay­ment has been made, with of­fi­cers be­ing told re-au­dit­ing and fund­ing are still pend­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Gue­vara, the sit­u­a­tion is es­pe­cial­ly trou­bling giv­en that mil­lions of dol­lars were re­port­ed­ly al­lo­cat­ed to the IDC over the years.He cit­ed in­ter­nal doc­u­ments in­di­cat­ing the cen­tre op­er­at­ed at $12 mil­lion in 2014, $16 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly be­tween 2015 and 2018, $23 mil­lion in 2019, and an ad­di­tion­al $6 mil­lion spent on de­vel­op­ment work over a three-year pe­ri­od.

“Where did the mon­ey go? What de­vel­op­ment project?” he asked.

He de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as un­safe, cit­ing non-func­tion­al in­dus­tri­al fans, in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion and heat pro­tec­tion for de­tainees, poor light­ing, lack of ba­sic equip­ment such as flash­lights and bat­ter­ies, and com­pro­mised sleep­ing con­di­tions.

Gue­vara al­so crit­i­cised man­age­ment, al­leg­ing that ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers were side­lined while in­ex­pe­ri­enced staff were hired, in­creas­ing the risk of se­cu­ri­ty breach­es.

Grant echoed these con­cerns, de­scrib­ing man­age­ment at the IDC as “to­tal­ly no good from the top to the bot­tom.”

He said pre­vi­ous man­agers had been ef­fec­tive, but stan­dards de­clined af­ter­wards.

Grant al­so ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with on­go­ing ex­pla­na­tions about pay­ment de­lays.

“We’ve been wait­ing for quite a long while. This is very an­noy­ing,” he said. “With all the mil­lions pass­ing through Im­mi­gra­tion, mon­ey could have been sourced to deal with us.”

Last month, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged the work­ers’ con­cerns, say­ing he in­tend­ed to raise the mat­ter with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary.

In a state­ment, Alexan­der said the min­istry had en­coun­tered ne­glect­ed in­sti­tu­tions with de­te­ri­o­rat­ing work­ing con­di­tions and low staff morale when it as­sumed of­fice.

“It is our man­date to as­sess these con­cerns and ad­dress them,” the min­is­ter said, adding that while dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing, some is­sues can­not be re­solved im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter years of ne­glect.

How­ev­er, the re­tired of­fi­cers say pa­tience has run out.

They are now press­ing for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to IDC’s fi­nances and man­age­ment prac­tices, in­sist­ing that ac­count­abil­i­ty is the on­ly way to en­sure they re­ceive the gra­tu­ity owed for years of ser­vice.