Michelle Loubon

Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Anand Rame­sar says the 17 to 26 per cent in­crease in the po­lice com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages be­ing pub­li­cised is an anom­aly. He al­so said there was a lot of omis­sions. Rame­sar made the ob­ser­va­tion against the back­drop of po­lice of­fi­cers' threats to em­bark on a day of Rest and Re­flec­tion to­mor­row. A paid ad­ver­tise­ment which ap­pears on Page A4 of the Sun­day Guardian to­day, states the of­fi­cers' com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages. When con­tact­ed, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said he did not know about the ad­ver­tise­ment. He said: "I don't know about any paid ad­ver­tise­ment. I did not is­sue that doc­u­ment. I wrote a let­ter to the of­fi­cers." Com­ment­ing on Sandy's re­sponse, Rame­sar said: "The five per cent is a lot less than what can be af­ford­ed.

"The doc­u­ment is mis­lead­ing. It is an anom­aly. And there are a lot of omis­sions." He al­so felt there should be no fi­nan­cial dis­par­i­ty be­tween mar­ried and un­mar­ried of­fi­cer. Rame­sar said: "In any event, if the doc­u­ment ac­com­pa­nies the let­ter he should be held re­spon­si­ble for its con­tents. I main­tain it's an anom­aly. For ex­am­ple, the sin­gle cor­po­ral would re­ceive more mon­ey than the un­mar­ried cor­po­ral. All mar­ried of­fi­cers re­ceive a high­er salary than their coun­ter­parts in the re­spec­tive ranks. The doc­u­ment comes from his of­fice." Quizzed on whether he re­ceived a copy of the let­ter from Sandy, Rame­sar said: "No­body would have of­fi­cial­ly sent that let­ter to me. But I'm aware of it. I don't think I am an in­tend­ed re­cip­i­ent. It would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for that let­ter to be sent to me be­cause I don't ne­go­ti­ate with Sandy."

He said a pre­sen­ta­tion was done on be­half of its mem­bers. He said from March, "there was an un­der­tak­ing of the Gov­ern­ment to do an MOU and to date, that has not been done". Mean­while, Rame­sar gave no in­di­ca­tion the ac­tion would be called off. Nor did he rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of meet­ing with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers. He said: "I am avail­able through­out the week­end to as­sist any of the stake­hold­ers in al­lay­ing what could hap­pen on Mon­day." Pres­i­dent of the BIG­WU Vin­cent Cabr­era said it was fu­tile and counter pro­duc­tive to en­gage in con­flict with crime fight­ers. He re­frained from com­ment­ing on the pro­posed in­crease.