Geisha Kow­lessar

A state­ment must be is­sued from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter clear­ly in­di­cat­ing who is guard­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Mak­ing the call was pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion In­sp Anand Rame­sar while speak­ing on i95.5fm yes­ter­day.

Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers, de­tailed to guard Row­ley, had com­plained of work­ing long hours.

Last Fri­day, Row­ley ar­rived at Par­lia­ment with a se­cu­ri­ty team com­pris­ing De­fence Force mem­bers.

Asked whether this was still the case Rame­sar said, "I did make a pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in­to it and I un­der­stand mem­bers of the De­fence Force are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in some form of du­ty with the Prime Min­is­ter and what we need at this point in time is some clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the prime min­is­ter's of­fi­cer in re­la­tion to what is hap­pen­ing.

"We need to have that in­for­ma­tion so that our of­fi­cers would know ex­act­ly what is their role and func­tion."

Rame­sar al­so made it clear that Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers had no com­plaints against the Prime Min­is­ter but rather man­age­ment in the Po­lice Ser­vice in­clud­ing de­ploy­ment of of­fi­cers.

"The is­sue is be­ing dis­cussed out of con­text as if it is the Prime Min­is­ter to blame for what is hap­pen­ing and def­i­nite­ly that is not the sit­u­a­tion.

"Some­body is try­ing to politi­cise it in the first in­stance when there is no ef­fort, no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that this has any­thing to do from a po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tive," Rame­sar said.

He said Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers have al­so gone on record to say that they loved to work with Row­ley.

Of­fi­cers have al­so de­nied claims that it was be­cause of Row­ley's hec­tic sched­ule that they were over­worked.

"This is an ab­solute­ly wrong analy­sis and at no point in time was that com­plaint brought to the as­so­ci­a­tion," Rame­sar said.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing last week with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, Rame­sar said the mat­ter was now set­tled.

He added that dur­ing that meet­ing Williams agreed that the of­fi­cers sched­ule of work­ing "24/24" did not al­low them time to rest.

"This was al­so not the prac­tice. The prac­tice is 24 hours fol­lowed by 48 hours rest and the Com­mis­sion­er en­sured that this was re­turned to that par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion.

"When he al­so en­quired in­to the mat­ter there was a re­duc­tion in the man­pow­er be­cause a num­ber of of­fi­cers were on train­ing. It is no longer an is­sue," Rame­sar said.