Geisha Kow­lessar

It's back to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble to­day for mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis.The meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion's sec­re­tary Sgt Michael Seales, would be held at 9.30 am at the CPO's Port-of-Spain of­fice.Seales said chief on the front burn­er would be in­creased al­lowances in­clud­ing:

• Plain clothes

• Re­triev­ing of de­com­posed bod­ies

• Bomb tech­ni­cians

• Pro­vid­ing VIP pro­tec­tion

He said the present as­so­ci­a­tion had been work­ing with what was pro­posed by the pre­vi­ous as­so­ci­a­tion body un­der Cpl Em­rol Bruce."What we are do­ing is mod­i­fy­ing those pro­pos­als put for­ward pre­vi­ous­ly be­cause we have to ne­go­ti­ate with what is al­ready ex­ist­ing," Seales ex­plained.Throw­ing sup­port be­hind Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (Op­er­a­tions) Jack Ewats­ki to put more uni­formed of­fi­cers on the streets, Seales said ne­go­ti­a­tions would al­so be fo­cused on gen­er­at­ing greater ben­e­fits for uni­formed of­fi­cers.The 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing pi­lot project, which was launched in West­ern Di­vi­sion last week Mon­day by Ewats­ki, is aimed at cre­at­ing greater pub­lic safe­ty and restor­ing con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Seales, who said there was a lot of mer­it in the project, added, "There are al­so plans to in­crease the num­ber of uni­formed of­fi­cers in all di­vi­sions and in do­ing so the as­so­ci­a­tion must en­sure that the stan­dard of liv­ing for uni­formed of­fi­cers must be raised."We can­not al­low the uni­formed of­fi­cers to suf­fer be­cause they are very rel­e­vant to so­ci­ety."He said while the as­so­ci­a­tion was will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate mem­bers were adamant that they would not set­tle for a five per cent salary in­crease."The fig­ure put for­ward by the pre­vi­ous as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers was a 40 per cent salary in­crease and we are work­ing with that and we are will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate.

"But five per cent is def­i­nite­ly out of the ques­tion. We are not set­tling for less than dou­ble dig­its," Seales added.Asked what would be the next step if the dou­ble dig­it fig­ure was not of­fered Seales said, "When we reach that bridge we will cross it. Right now we are con­cen­trat­ing on al­lowances."He said once a rea­son­able of­fer had been made re­gard­ing al­lowances the pro­pos­al would then be tak­en to the gen­er­al coun­cil of the as­so­ci­a­tion."From there it would be de­cid­ed whether we would ac­cept or not be­cause the as­so­ci­a­tion is al­ways guid­ed by the gen­er­al coun­cil," Seales said.

Ques­tioned about claims made by Bruce that there was a rift be­tween first and sec­ond di­vi­sion of­fi­cers due to re­cent al­le­ga­tions made by the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Sgt Anand Rame­sar, Seales said the as­so­ci­a­tion was "gagged.""We are not al­lowed to speak re­gard­ing any­thing con­cern­ing that be­cause our cen­tral com­mit­tee has put a gag re­lat­ing to those is­sues."Rame­sar was thrown in­to the spot­light with­in re­cent weeks fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions there was no East In­di­ans on the Po­lice Ser­vice Pro­mo­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Board.Rame­sar and Seales al­so al­leged se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were tak­ing bribes in ex­change for grant­i­ng Firearm Users' Li­cences.