The Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion has giv­en the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship 2012/2013 bud­get the thumbs up. The as­so­ci­a­tion's sec­re­tary, Sgt Michael Seales, said yes­ter­day he was pleased with the ini­tia­tives laid out by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, who de­liv­ered his maid­en bud­get speech in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. "The Po­lice Ser­vice is very hap­py and sat­is­fied with the bud­get. It cov­ered many ar­eas in a mean­ing­ful and pos­i­tive man­ner," Seales added. He said he be­lieved out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions would be fi­nal­ly set­tled and po­lice of­fi­cers will re­ceive a fig­ure of more than five per cent. "Al­though the Fi­nance Min­is­ter didn't spe­cial­ly men­tion ne­go­ti­a­tions, we are get­ting sig­nals this is the di­rec­tion we are head­ing, and we be­lieve it would be set­tled in a man­ner that would be favourable to po­lice of­fi­cers. "We anx­ious­ly an­tic­i­pate this. Right now the is­sue of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions is in the court, but we are very hope­ful that it would be soon set­tled," Seales added.

In out­lin­ing the ini­tia­tives, Howai said there would be an in­crease in tech­nol­o­gy with the com­put­er­i­sa­tion of 75 po­lice charge rooms. He added that video con­fer­enc­ing would al­so be made avail­able and ev­i­dence-based polic­ing us­ing sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods for solv­ing crime would be strength­ened. De­scrib­ing these mea­sures as mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion to mod­ernise the Po­lice Ser­vice, Seales said it took a great ef­fort to move the or­gan­i­sa­tion from a pa­per-based sys­tem to a pa­per­less one. Howai al­so an­nounced that Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice will now join their col­leagues in the po­lice and pris­ons ser­vices in re­ceiv­ing a non-tax­able spe­cial al­lowance of $1,000.

This Seales de­scribed as a huge plus in Howai's pre­sen­ta­tion. "This spe­cial al­lowance is some­thing the as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar and I have been fight­ing for a long while be­cause for far too long the SRPs have been ne­glect­ed. "We have been very vo­cal about it and we be­lieve we have scored a ma­jor vic­to­ry now that the al­lo­ca­tion has fi­nal­ly hap­pened," Seales said. On the con­tin­u­a­tion of the joint army/po­lice pa­trols, Seales said the as­so­ci­a­tion had no prob­lem with this. He al­so laud­ed the ef­forts of po­lice and sol­diers and agreed with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er that the pres­ence of the law­men had re­sult­ed in no mur­ders in Laven­tille over 22 days. "We were part of the stake­hold­er meet­ing with the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and we be­lieve the joint pa­trols have yield­ed great re­sults and the pa­trols will con­tin­ue to do so. "It is al­so an ef­fort to bridge the gap be­tween the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty, be­cause law en­force­ment must al­so em­brace the com­mu­ni­ty." Seales said the as­so­ci­a­tion will now be clam­our­ing for the non-tax­able spe­cial al­lowance al­so to be al­lo­cat­ed to mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, whom he de­scribed as hard­work­ing and ded­i­cat­ed.