Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cers of the Port of Spain Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice moved their charge room out­side due to poor work­ing con­di­tions in its City Hall of­fice. The move came ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, just one day be­fore the city's new may­or is ex­pect­ed to be sworn in.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty on Tues­day morn­ing, an of­fi­cer said they were forced to make the move as the air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem has not been work­ing for months. The of­fi­cer said this has made the space un­bear­able to work in, es­pe­cial­ly while in uni­form.

A let­ter sent to Guardian Me­dia by se­nior of­fi­cers, who wished to re­main un­named, out­lined sev­er­al oth­er is­sues plagu­ing the mu­nic­i­pal force. These ranged from pri­va­cy con­cerns with dor­mi­to­ries and wash­room fa­cil­i­ties and even cock­roach in­fes­ta­tions.

"As we an­tic­i­pate the ad­di­tion of 36 new male of­fi­cers to our sta­tion, it be­comes painful­ly ev­i­dent that our cur­rent fa­cil­i­ties can­not ad­e­quate­ly ac­com­mo­date this in­flux. With­out swift and mean­ing­ful ac­tion, the al­ready com­pro­mised con­di­tions will fur­ther de­te­ri­o­rate, af­fect­ing the morale and ef­fi­cien­cy of our of­fi­cers," the let­ter said.

"We im­plore you to rec­og­nize the plight of the ded­i­cat­ed mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers who tire­less­ly serve our com­mu­ni­ty un­der less-than-ide­al cir­cum­stances. We urge you to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to rec­ti­fy the de­fi­cien­cies out­lined above, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing prop­er hous­ing, san­i­ta­tion, and work­ing con­di­tions for all of­fi­cers."

It al­so called for the unit to be re­moved from un­der the man­age­ment of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions "and placed un­der a more ap­pro­pri­ate gov­ern­ing body that can en­sure prop­er ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port and fund­ing."

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, called on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to pro­tect and serve the of­fi­cers whom they re­ly on to do the same for the na­tion's cap­i­tal.

"In the city of Port of Spain, which is a look­ing class through­out the en­tire Caribbean re­gion, we need to en­sure there is a drag­net of safe­ty giv­en to all the per­sons who use the city and these of­fi­cers are para­mount in that fight," he said.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia for com­ment on the mat­ter, the Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, An­nette Sta­ple­ton- Seaforth said she was un­able to com­ment at this time as she need­ed to get more in­for­ma­tion. She im­me­di­ate­ly hung up be­fore Guardian Me­dia could ask any­thing fur­ther.