Geisha Kow­lessar

The Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion will file an ap­peal to the Po­lice Ser­vice Ap­peals Com­mis­sion amid claims of in­equal­i­ty and un­fair treat­ment of some 354 po­lice con­sta­bles re­port­ed­ly be­ing by­passed for pro­mo­tion.The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, said his mem­ber­ship would al­so seek fur­ther re­dress at the High Court if nec­es­sary.Rame­sar and the as­so­ci­a­tion's sec­re­tary, Sgt Michael Seales, and Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki were locked in a two-hour meet­ing on Mon­day, dur­ing which award in­cen­tives were al­so dis­cussed.Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams were sup­posed to at­tend the meet­ing which be­gan at 10 am.How­ev­er, both Gibbs and Williams were called to at­tend an­oth­er meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.Ac­cord­ing to Seales, in 2008, 355 con­sta­bles wrote the ex­am to be pro­mot­ed to the rank of cor­po­ral.He said they all passed but were yet to be called be­fore the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment board to be in­ter­viewed, which was the sec­ond phase of the over­all pro­mo­tion ex­ams."Out of those 355, there were per­sons be­ing in­ter­viewed for the rank of cor­po­ral," Seales said. "A con­sta­ble by the name of Romell Morales took then com­mis­sion­er to court and in ap­ply­ing for ju­di­cial re­view the com­mis­sion­er would have giv­en him an un­der­tak­ing to in­ter­view him and oth­er peo­ple who had passed the ex­am at that time."That of­fi­cer was sub­se­quent­ly pro­mot­ed but un­for­tu­nate­ly the oth­ers were not.

"We have a very good case of un­equal treat­ment and the oth­er of­fi­cers were treat­ed un­fair­ly." The as­so­ci­a­tion, Seales said, was ques­tion­ing why the oth­er of­fi­cers were not called be­fore the board. "If it's good for one, then you can do it for all," he added.An­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing five sergeants was brought to Ewats­ki's at­ten­tion.The sergeants, Seales said, com­plet­ed the one-year pro­ba­tion which end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2011, but they, too, were yet to be called be­fore the pro­mo­tion board.These sergeants were placed in the pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od be­cause there was no avail­able po­si­tion in a unit, sta­tion or branch to place them, he ex­plained."Un­like the oth­ers, their pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od would have been waived be­cause they were placed," Seales said. "We would have tried to make at­tempts for the five sergeants to be in­ter­viewed to the rank of in­spec­tor...The as­sess­ment process for in­spec­tor is now be­ing con­duct­ed."The ar­gu­ment is that when the as­sess­ment process start­ed, the sergeants had not made a year so there is a dilem­ma and the law is silent on the is­sue whether or not when the process starts, whether you have to have al­ready served your pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od."Charg­ing that the man­age­ment of the Po­lice Ser­vice was en­gag­ing in un­fair in­dus­tri­al prac­tices, Seales urged that the mat­ter be im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed.The is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion was al­so raised.Po­lice of­fi­cers were made to work some 50 hours a week be­cause of the im­po­si­tion of the State of Emer­gency, he said.Rame­sar said rec­om­men­da­tions were made to award de­tec­tives and Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Of­fi­cers (SRPs) com­pen­sa­tion for their long hours of work.He said he was in­formed by Ewats­ki yes­ter­day that no ex­tra monies would be award­ed to the SRPs."It was agreed in prin­ci­ple that in­cen­tives were to be giv­en to the de­tec­tives, but that has not been worked out," he said.