Camille Clarke

Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent act­ing In­spec­tor Anand Rame­sar is call­ing for act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams to ex­press his views on Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to pre­cept sol­diers.At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, af­ter a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing of his or­gan­i­sa­tion at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion, Port-of-Spain, Rame­sar said hun­dreds of po­lice of­fi­cers have al­ready signed a pe­ti­tion against the pre­cept­ing of sol­diers.

He said: "A pe­ti­tion was gen­er­at­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers and it was ac­cept­ed as suf­fi­cient­ly pre­pared in a man­ner that is valid that has giv­en a man­date to this ex­ec­u­tive. "This is a call from the mem­ber­ship... we are call­ing for the act­ing com­mis­sion­er who was in­vit­ed to at­tend this meet­ing to­day but failed to at­tend."

Rame­sar said on Tues­day, Williams no­ti­fied the as­so­ci­a­tion that he would be un­able to at­tend the meet­ing.He added: "The mem­ber­ship is dis­sat­is­fied by his not at­tend­ing and it is now a call from the mem­bers to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late what is his cur­rent po­si­tion on the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion."He is silent on the is­sue and we need a leader who is in line with the con­cerns of the mem­ber­ship and clear­ly to how we feel about the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion. Ei­ther he is in line with the mem­ber­ship or he isn't.

"He has un­til Fri­day (to­mor­row) or else we have to take a course of ac­tion. We will not en­gage in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. Af­ter Fri­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion will ob­serve the rule of law and will not do any­thing il­le­gal and com­mu­ni­cate this to the au­thor­i­ties."Rame­sar said of­fi­cers who have signed the pe­ti­tion have al­so been threat­ened and there were al­so thou­sands of re­tired of­fi­cers, Spe­cial Re­serve Of­fi­cers and oth­er re­cruits who were will­ing to take up du­ty in­stead of us­ing the sol­diers.

Rame­sar said a can­dle­light vig­il would be held next Wednes­day at 6 pm on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, and al­so in To­ba­go.For­mer pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Cpl Em­rol Bruce, is call­ing for rel­a­tives, friends and oth­er in­ter­est­ed par­ties to show sup­port.

On Tues­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Dr Roodal Mooni­lal met with mem­bers of as­so­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss var­i­ous amend­ments to the De­fence Act (Amend­ment) Bill.