Gail Alexan­der

Some 2,500 new­ly-de­signed Po­lice Ser­vice shirts and pants pur­chased last May by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) are now be­ing used by Po­lice Train­ing Cen­tre re­cruits, since Cab­i­net did not ap­prove them, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said yes­ter­day.

Sandy gave the in­for­ma­tion in re­ply to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the is­sue. The mat­ter of the new­ly-de­signed po­lice uni­forms was raised last year by the Op­po­si­tion, which queried the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er's pur­chase of the uni­forms and their use. Yes­ter­day, Sandy said the CoP had said the uni­forms were ac­quired for use on a tri­al ba­sis for the West­ern Di­vi­sion as part of the re­brand­ing in the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive.

Sandy said the Po­lice Ser­vice said the com­mis­sion­er bought the uni­forms in May 2012. The uni­forms com­prise 1,500 shirts cost­ing $293,880, and 1,000 pants cost­ing $233,310. Some 3,000 mo­tifs were al­so bought in Ju­ly 2012 at a cost of $84,090, Sandy added.

He said ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 123 A1 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the CoP shall have com­plete pow­er to man­age the Po­lice Ser­vice and is re­quired to en­sure the hu­man, fi­nan­cial and ma­te­r­i­al re­sources avail­able to the ser­vice are used in ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive ways.

He said, sub­se­quent to this, the CoP, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 2010, was made ac­count­ing of­fi­cer for the ser­vice. In that ca­pac­i­ty, he was re­quired to use his pow­er in ac­cor­dance with all pro­vi­sions for all reg­u­la­tions, poli­cies and guide­lines.