Some 13 spe­cial re­serve po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers have been sent pack­ing in the wake of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er's plan to boost the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) with the re­cruit­ment of 5,000 ad­di­tion­al SRPs. The SRPs, who were orig­i­nal­ly hired by the TTPS then trans­ferred to the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice, were all at­tached to the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­veal the SRPs were dis­missed fol­low­ing an al­leged va­ca­tion leave scam at the cor­po­ra­tion.

The of­fi­cers are en­ti­tled to 14 days' sick leave an­nu­al­ly. Po­lice of­fi­cers with one to ten years of ser­vice are en­ti­tled to va­ca­tion leave of 28 days, while of­fi­cers with ser­vice of ten years and over are grant­ed 35 days leave. How­ev­er, the of­fi­cers, some who have been with the cor­po­ra­tion for the past three years, are claim­ing they have on­ly been al­lowed to 21 days' leave and were not com­pen­sat­ed for the oth­er sev­en days.

In­stead, Sun­day Guardian learned, when the of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to query the breach of the em­ploy­ment guide­lines they were giv­en dis­missal let­ters. Con­tents of the let­ter ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian stat­ed: "I re­fer to your month to month con­tract with the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion which will come to an end on 30th Sep­tem­ber, 2012. The cor­po­ra­tion wish­es to thank you for your ser­vices ren­dered to them. You are to pro­ceed on all leave you are en­ti­tled to at the dis­cre­tion of the of­fi­cer in charge. Any leave be­yond Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012, will be paid for."

The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that in­ter­est­ed per­sons may sub­mit a r&ea­cute;sum&ea­cute; to the cor­po­ra­tion to be con­sid­ered for fur­ther em­ploy­ment. The of­fi­cers said they were weigh­ing their le­gal op­tions. "No­body knows where this month-to-month con­tract orig­i­nat­ed from. We nev­er signed any con­tract like that. We have been sent home be­cause we start­ed to ques­tion why we were on­ly be­ing al­lowed to take 21 days' leave and not 28 days. Even our com­pen­sato­ry time off that is sup­posed to be grant­ed with­in a six-week pe­ri­od we are not get­ting.

"We some­times have to wait three and four months be­fore we get it. Some­thing is not right. Since when po­lice of­fi­cers are hired on a month-to-month ba­sis? One minute there is a short­age of po­lice of­fi­cers and then the next thing po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing sent home," one of the of­fi­cers stat­ed. On­ly last month act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams ad­mit­ted the TTPS had a short­age of 1,500 po­lice of­fi­cers. Williams said re­cruit­ment of SRPs was ex­pect­ed to fill the gap to meet the re­quired po­lice force of 7,715.

May­or: In­de­pen­dence sick leave led to ter­mi­na­tion of SRPs

Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar had a dif­fer­ent sto­ry to tell when Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed him to shed some light on the dis­missal of the SRPs. Stay­ing clear from com­ment­ing on the an­nu­al leave scam, Nages­sar said the cor­po­ra­tion took a de­ci­sion to end the con­tract of the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fices fol­low­ing In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions put on by the Bor­ough.

Nages­sar said: "On the day we had our In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tion, 12 of the SRPs was as­signed to the Ch­agua­nas Main Road and to as­sist with the keep­ing or­der close to stage. Out of the 12, eight of the SRPs called in sick and we had to get as­sis­tance from the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice to main­tain or­der.

"The mat­ter came up at a meet­ing and we felt it was very un­pro­fes­sion­al, un­eth­i­cal, that eight SRPs got sick on the morn­ing of the cel­e­bra­tions. We found it to be out of the or­di­nary and the coun­cil took a de­ci­sion at the end of this month we would end their con­tracts and re-in­ter­view them next month. We are go­ing to as­sess them and see if they should be re­hired. They are go­ing to come be­fore an in­ter­view pan­el who would de­ter­mine if they would work at the cor­po­ra­tion."

Ques­tioned as to whether the SRPs were giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain them­selves, the may­or said: "We do not know what com­plaints they have. If they have any­thing against their su­pe­ri­ors at the in­ter­view all com­plaints will be heard. I would not know about their leave; they were ter­mi­nat­ed and will be re-in­ter­viewed." Tele­phone calls and mes­sages sent to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and pres­i­dent of Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Anand Rame­sar went unan­swered.