Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A to­tal of 34 po­lice of­fi­cers were pro­mot­ed to the rank of cor­po­ral on Thurs­day, af­ter a “com­put­er glitch” was blamed for the er­ro­neous pro­mo­tion of an­oth­er batch of some 29 of­fi­cers.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ACP Ram­nar­ine Sama­roo said the po­lice are still seek­ing ad­vice on how to ad­dress the is­sue of the er­ro­neous­ly pro­mot­ed of­fi­cers. He said af­ter he learnt of the mis­take, he im­me­di­ate­ly launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion which point­ed to a non-man­made er­ror.

“There was a glitch, some peo­ple who were sup­posed to be pro­mot­ed fell out. A com­pre­hen­sive over­haul was done to find out what caused the glitch,” he said.

He said of­fi­cers who were in­ter­viewed over a six-month pe­ri­od were resched­ul­ing their in­ter­views and when they fi­nal­ly did, the fi­nal tal­ly had some of their names re­peat­ed. This, he said ,caused the spread­sheet to re­flect some 2,500 en­tries when on­ly 2,232 of­fi­cers were in­ter­viewed. Sama­roo said that was not the fault of any­one.

The cor­rec­tion came less than a week af­ter 93 po­lice of­fi­cers wrote to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC), call­ing on it to dis­ci­pline Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Chrsi­to­pher over the “er­ro­neous” pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise. On Thurs­day, a re­vised mer­it list was pub­lished show­ing what po­lice said was the cor­rect mer­it list.

Of­fi­cers, who were on the mer­it list from as far back as 2009, were up in arms af­ter their col­leagues who scored less than they were pro­mot­ed ahead of them.

Af­ter a three-month wait for their in­di­vid­ual scores and the mer­it list, of­fi­cers were giv­en their scores last Wednes­day and re­alised, when com­par­ing with each oth­er, that some of­fi­cers with low­er scores were part of the batch of 893 of­fi­cers pro­mot­ed.

Ag­griev­ed of­fi­cers said the glitch that caused un­der­serv­ing of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed was a man­made glitch.

One of­fi­cer, who was orig­i­nal­ly placed at 951, was re­vised to 363. An­oth­er of­fi­cer, who was at 1,020, was placed at 393. An­oth­er, who was ranked at 681, was re­vised and is now ranked at 915, while one of­fi­cer first ranked at 359 is now 943.

The po­lice ser­vice is now look­ing at how they can re­tain their pro­mo­tion or are de­mot­ed.

Sama­roo said there are avail­able spots for some 1,200 of­fi­cers and as soon as there are avail­able po­si­tions, there will be pro­mo­tions.

How­ev­er, some of­fi­cers said the en­tire pro­mo­tion ex­er­cise should be scrapped and re­done.

In an in­ter­nal memo on De­cem­ber 6 last year, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er apol­o­gised to her of­fi­cers for what she de­scribed as an “anom­al­ly.”

She said: “I un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tion of the con­cerns raised, not just for the af­fect­ed ranks, but for all of­fi­cers of the TTPS and con­fi­dence in our pro­mo­tion process­es go­ing for­ward. In the cir­cum­stances, I wish to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise for this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent, and for the ad­verse im­pacts it would have on the af­fect­ed of­fi­cers.”