With on­ly five days away be­fore T&T's cel­e­bra­tion of its 48th an­niver­sary of be­com­ing an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, the gen­er­al coun­cil of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion has tak­en the de­ci­sion to boy­cott the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade.

Not on­ly would they not be par­tic­i­pat­ing and at­tend­ing the cel­e­bra­tion but an im­me­di­ate halt to all over­time work is al­so part of the coun­cil's plan of ma­jor protest ac­tion. The de­ci­sion comes af­ter fail­ure to in­crease salary and com­pen­sa­tion for over­time due to of­fi­cers, among oth­er is­sues. A re­port on CNC3 last night quot­ed pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Anand Rame­sar as say­ing of­fi­cers have had enough of emp­ty promis­es and dis­re­spect. He al­so stat­ed of­fi­cers have reached a boil­ing point and so a strong mes­sage must be sent, not on­ly to the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive but al­so to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er rel­a­tive of­fi­cials.

He added that the salary be­ing paid to po­lice of­fi­cers have not been fi­nalised and the as­so­ci­a­tion be­lieved of­fi­cers could not con­tin­ue to func­tion on a 2007 salary in 2010. "In some cas­es of­fi­cers have not re­ceived over­time pay­ments in ex­cess of a year. This is ex­ploita­tion of of­fi­cers," said Rame­sar. Rame­sar, who had been in marathon meet­ings with the gen­er­al coun­cil and oth­er of­fi­cials, said the re­cent an­nounce­ment re­gard­ing the mil­lion dol­lar salary to be paid to new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs and the re­sponse of the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er se­nior Cab­i­net min­is­ters to that reached the break­ing point.

Apart from that, he said, the re­cent killings of of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing the lat­est–the mur­der of PC Ja­son Thomas, a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer who was killed while ply­ing his taxi–fur­ther an­gered of­fi­cers. The as­so­ci­a­tion said noth­ing was be­ing said to of­fi­cers to ad­dress their con­cerns and there ap­peared to be no sign of res­o­lu­tion on the ta­ble. "Be­cause of this all po­lice of­fi­cers will no longer work the ex­tra 12 hours over­time, which was on­ly re­cent­ly hailed by the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive as the main rea­son for the largest num­ber of nar­cotics and weapons be­ing seized in just one week," said Rame­sar.

He said all po­lice of­fi­cers have been told to boy­cott the In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions. "This is the first step and fur­ther ac­tion would be tak­en by po­lice of­fi­cers," warned Rame­sar.