An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The ab­sorp­tion of 800 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed over the next nine months.

This was the word from Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, yes­ter­day, who said the re­cruit­ment will be done in two batch­es num­ber­ing 250 each, and a fi­nal batch of 300.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia ahead of a third meet­ing with SRPs at the Tacarigua In­door Rac­quet Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin said, “We re­al­ly do ap­pre­ci­ate the work that these of­fi­cers are do­ing.”

This meet­ing was the third in a se­ries aimed at ad­vis­ing SRPs on the process mov­ing for­ward.

Say­ing the TTPS had met with of­fi­cers in the south, north-west and now east­ern dis­tricts to en­gage and ad­vise on the ab­sorp­tion process, he ex­plained it was done to en­sure, “they un­der­stand what is need­ed, and al­so in­form them of some of the fu­ture things we have in store for them.”

Ben­jamin as­sured all SRPs, in­clud­ing the dis­grun­tled ones, that fail­ure to qual­i­fy for ab­sorp­tion was not the end of the road for them.

“As we look ahead, we are see­ing a bet­ter and brighter fu­ture for SRPs and we are tak­ing the time to share our plans with them,” he added.

Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged there were of­fi­cers who had demon­strat­ed a lev­el of dis­ci­pline and com­mit­ment.

He said be­cause of this, the TTPS is com­mit­ted to in­tro­duc­ing plans to en­sure those who fail to qual­i­fy for ab­sorp­tion could still ben­e­fit from mea­sures that will en­sure a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life af­ter the job ends.

Speak­ing af­ter the meet­ing, Ben­jamin de­scribed it as one of the more “fruit­ful and am­i­ca­ble ones.”

Among the is­sues raised yes­ter­day was a re­quest for con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to the years of ser­vice by of­fi­cers – es­pe­cial­ly those who do not have the Eng­lish Lan­guage re­quire­ment.

In ad­di­tion, SRPs were seek­ing to find out if their ser­vice at oth­er mil­i­tary agen­cies could be count­ed; whilst some were quite in­ter­est­ed in how many chances they could be giv­en to pass the poly­graph test which is al­so a re­quire­ment.

Ben­jamin said they would con­tin­ue to as­sess “nov­el sit­u­a­tions” as they arise.

Even with the fi­nal meet­ing sched­uled for To­ba­go on Wednes­day, he said SRPs who meet the ba­sic re­quire­ments can check the list at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, where they can ver­i­fy if their name is on the list and the next phase of the process can com­mence.

Asked if this 800-strong ab­sorp­tion would be enough to as­sist in re­duc­ing the hu­man re­source deficit with­in the TTPS, he said it would go a long way, in con­junc­tion with si­mul­ta­ne­ous re­cruit­ment ex­er­cis­es.