The sug­ges­tion by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Roger Alexan­der, that there are po­lice of­fi­cers who may be abus­ing their sick leave en­ti­tle­ment is trou­bling.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Mr Alexan­der called for the ap­point­ment of a med­ical board to as­sess the well-be­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers “who are on ex­tend­ed leave for no ap­par­ent rea­son and who have oth­er is­sues.”

He said the po­lice ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment, which de­pends on law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to solve crime and ap­pre­hend crim­i­nals, need to know the med­ical sta­tus of those on ex­tend­ed sick leave be­cause they are count­ed as be­ing part of the staff com­ple­ment of the po­lice ser­vice, but they are not ac­tive.

Were it not for the fact that Mr Alexan­der spent decades in the po­lice ser­vice, ris­ing to the post of se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent, his sug­ges­tion that there are “po­lice of­fi­cers on ex­tend­ed sick leave for no ap­par­ent rea­son” would have been dis­missed as a spu­ri­ous at­tempt to ma­lign po­lice of­fi­cers.

But how could it be that there are any po­lice of­fi­cers on ex­tend­ed sick leave when the Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions re­quire of­fi­cers wish­ing to ex­tend their sick leave to make an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, ac­com­pa­nied by a med­ical cer­tifi­cate from a du­ly qual­i­fied med­ical prac­ti­tion­er?

Quite ob­vi­ous­ly, the new Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty is sug­gest­ing that there are po­lice of­fi­cers who have nei­ther sub­mit­ted the req­ui­site ap­pli­ca­tion to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, nor are on ac­tive du­ty.

If this news­pa­per’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Mr Alexan­der’s words is cor­rect, that is a to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able state of af­fairs.

It means that the hu­man re­source func­tion in the po­lice ser­vice has been de­grad­ed to the point where there is no clar­i­ty on the num­ber of of­fi­cers who are be­ing paid to work, but who have not re­port­ed for du­ty, af­ter a pe­ri­od of ill­ness, for rea­sons un­known to the po­lice high com­mand and the min­is­ter in charge of the po­lice ser­vice.

Giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of this sit­u­a­tion, it be­hoves Min­is­ter Alexan­der to call on act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin to im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide a com­plete list of those of­fi­cers who are miss­ing in ac­tion.

Mr Ben­jamin needs to un­der­stand that the process of se­lect­ing a new sub­stan­tive hold­er of the of­fice of com­mis­sion­er is ex­pect­ed to start some­time this year. Sure­ly, the abil­i­ty of the act­ing com­mis­sion­er to ac­count for the readi­ness for du­ty of all his of­fi­cers would be used in de­ter­min­ing how high up the mer­it list he is placed.

With that said, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is not alone in con­tend­ing with se­ri­ous sick leave is­sues. This is no doubt a na­tion­al is­sue, which is not get­ting the at­ten­tion it de­serves, giv­en the clear link be­tween high lev­els of sick leave and low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In the ab­sence of an up­dat­ed na­tion­al pol­i­cy on sick leave, the TTPS should seek the as­sis­tance of the Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion or the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on the best means of im­ple­ment­ing a more ro­bust hu­man re­source regime. Such a regime would al­low the CoP to know im­me­di­ate­ly the work sta­tus of all the of­fi­cers un­der his com­mand.