Geisha Kow­lessar

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis has writ­ten to the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, in­form­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion had the right to re­fer their wage ne­go­ti­a­tion mat­ter to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, said he re­ceived Lewis' let­ter on Tues­day. He said he was al­so in­formed that Lewis would take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the as­so­ci­a­tion's re­quest of a 15 per cent salary in­crease.

Say­ing he was pre­pared to ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion and await word from Lewis, Rame­sar added: "The law pro­vides for ei­ther the as­so­ci­a­tion or the cpo to re­fer the mat­ter to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter. "At this point, I am pre­pared to ex­er­cise my dis­cre­tion and wait un­til I re­ceive fur­ther word from the cpo." For months dis­grun­tled of­fi­cers have been de­mand­ing a 40 per cent wage in­crease. That fig­ure was then re­duced by half, but Lewis al­so re­ject­ed the 20 per cent rec­om­men­da­tion by the as­so­ci­a­tion.

The fig­ure was then dropped even low­er to 15 per cent. Rame­sar, how­ev­er, said he was ful­ly pre­pared to go to the In­dus­tri­al Court as mem­bers have made it clear they would not ac­cept the five per cent pro­pos­al. "We are pre­pared to go to court in the morn­ing if we don't get a rea­son­able of­fer," he said.