Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is de­fend­ing po­lice over­time spend­ing, say­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice was not giv­en enough of­fi­cers and re­sources in the past to prop­er­ly car­ry out its du­ties.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims about over­time pay­ments to se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, in­sist­ing that first di­vi­sion of­fi­cers do not work over­time.

Alexan­der was speak­ing to re­porters at a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) event at The Canopies at Cau­ra Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day.

His com­ments come as ques­tions con­tin­ue over near­ly $800 mil­lion paid in po­lice over­time be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026.

Asked about the ex­pen­di­ture, Alexan­der said, “No first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer works over­time. So that state­ment on its whole is wrong.”

He de­fend­ed the work be­ing done by of­fi­cers, ar­gu­ing that the Po­lice Ser­vice had pre­vi­ous­ly been left with­out suf­fi­cient man­pow­er and re­sources.

“At this stage the po­lice is do­ing a re­mark­able job be­cause they were not giv­en be­fore the re­sources,” he said.

Alexan­der used the ex­am­ple of re­porters cov­er­ing sev­er­al as­sign­ments to ex­plain why hav­ing enough staff was im­por­tant.

He said that when an or­gan­i­sa­tion had suf­fi­cient work­ers, du­ties could be shared in­stead of re­quir­ing the same em­ploy­ees to work re­peat­ed­ly.

“They failed to re­cruit po­lice of­fi­cers in a time­ly man­ner and al­so the re­sources avail­able to help po­lice the place,” he said.

The min­is­ter’s com­ments fol­low dis­clo­sures ob­tained through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion ap­pli­ca­tion filed by at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan on be­half of cit­i­zen Vishal Per­sad.

The fig­ures, re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia this week, showed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice paid $793,893,264.65 in over­time over two years and eight months.

Of that amount, $233.87 mil­lion was paid in 2024, in­creas­ing to $276.84 mil­lion in 2025.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust this year alone, over­time pay­ments reached $283.19 mil­lion, al­ready ex­ceed­ing the en­tire amount spent in 2025.

The fig­ures have raised ques­tions about how po­lice man­pow­er is be­ing man­aged and whether the ex­pen­di­ture is pro­duc­ing mea­sur­able re­sults.

For­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has al­so chal­lenged the spend­ing, claim­ing that tax­pay­ers are pay­ing more while po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty has de­clined.

In a state­ment sent to the me­dia, Grif­fith ac­cused those ad­vis­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the over­time ex­pen­di­ture of do­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion a dis­ser­vice.