Geisha Kow­lessar

For­mer mem­bers of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) will face a bleak Christ­mas af­ter re­ceiv­ing news that they will be sent home on Oc­to­ber 31, with­out any fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

The law­men, some 300, were split be­tween car­ry­ing out du­ties at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre (NSOC), River­side Plaza, Port-of-Spain, and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tion Train­ing Unit (NSTU), Cu­mu­to, af­ter the dis­so­lu­tion of Sautt. How­ev­er, they re­ceived no­tice of their dis­missal via an e-mail sent by Pa­tri­cia Seep­aul, in­ter­im head of ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre, sources said yes­ter­day.

The e-mail sent of Oc­to­ber 3, read: "I wish to in­form you that ap­proval has been grant­ed for the ex­ten­sion of NSOC and ex­ist­ing staff from 1 to 31 Oc­to­ber, 12. The Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, has ad­vised that this is the last ex­ten­sion for NSOC. Please be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly."

How­ev­er, sources said when ques­tioned by mem­bers about some kind of com­pen­sa­tion pack­age or the ex-gra­tia pay­ment that was promised when Sautt was dis­solved, Seep­aul could pro­vide no an­swers. It was then re­it­er­at­ed to Sautt mem­bers that they would be sent home on Oc­to­ber 31.

Sautt, which was es­tab­lished in 2003, was dis­band­ed in Au­gust 2011, with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment re­port­ing it was sav­ing $132 mil­lion a year with such ac­tion. A steer­ing com­mit­tee com­pris­ing Prof Daniel Gibran, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, for­mer di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Col Al­bert Grif­fith and for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Jack­ie Wil­son were man­dat­ed to come up with a plan to re­struc­ture the unit.