Sascha?Wil­son

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams must deal ur­gent­ly with the un­safe and un­healthy work­ing con­di­tions po­lice work un­der at the cell­block area of the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court.So said Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Anand Rame­sar as the court's ad­min­is­tra­tive staff stayed away from work for a third day for the same rea­son, un­safe and un­healthy con­di­tions.

Rame­sar said he and his ex­ec­u­tive met with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er on Mon­day to dis­cuss the poor work­ing con­di­tions at the cell­block and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Op­er­a­tions Harold Phillip was ap­point­ed to ad­dress the con­cerns."So the com­mis­sion­er is aware of it. He was told of the di­lap­i­dat­ed, un­healthy and de­plorable work­ing con­di­tions for the of­fi­cers and the un­safe prac­tices oc­cur­ring in the har­bour­ing of pris­on­ers who are at­tend­ing court.

"So it is not on­ly a health risk but al­so a safe­ty risk be­ing in­curred in terms of the hold­ing of pris­on­ers with­out the use of prop­er pro­to­col," he added.The as­so­ci­a­tion, he said, would take the nec­es­sary ac­tion if noth­ing was done with­in a rea­son­able time but he ex­pects to get a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the com­mis­sion­er by next Wednes­day.He agreed it would take some time to do a prop­er in­spec­tion of the build­ing but said the health and safe­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers must be the pri­or­i­ty.

Rame­sar said po­lice at the cell­block were work­ing be­yond the call of du­ty since their lives were at risk on a dai­ly ba­sis.When Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke led court ad­min­is­tra­tive staff in a walk­out on Tues­day, he was barred from en­ter­ing the cell­block.Among the is­sues list­ed are no lunch­room, no drink­ing wa­ter, mal-func­tion­ing toi­lets, a foul odour and flood­ing when­ev­er it rains.The area is al­so in­fest­ed with mos­qui­toes, fleas and rats, it was stat­ed.

Duke has de­mand­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry pro­vides him with doc­u­ments, such as the Town and Coun­try plan­ning ap­proval; struc­tur­al en­gi­neer re­port; in­door air qual­i­ty test; fire cer­tifi­cate; Os­ha re­port of com­pli­ance; elec­tri­cal in­spec­torate re­port and a re­port on the health sur­veil­lance of em­ploy­ees, which cer­ti­fies the build­ing safe by to­day.Mean­while, court op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued to be af­fect­ed by the ab­sence of the ma­jor­i­ty of ad­min­is­tra­tive staff. The cashier's booth re­mained closed and some cas­es had to be post­poned.

Court was al­so closed at 3 pm yes­ter­day for the city cor­po­ra­tion to spray for mos­qui­toes.