Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son says that his par­ty has of­fered qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion to its mem­ber­ship dur­ing their two terms in of­fice and is con­fi­dent that they would con­tin­ue to seek the best in­ter­ests of po­lice of­fi­cers if re-elect­ed af­ter their June 30 elec­tions.

Dick­son made the re­marks dur­ing the launch of Team Prime, at the Murchi­son Brown Au­di­to­ri­um, Port of Spain City Hall, on Wednes­day, where he out­lined the suc­cess­es and achieve­ments made, since they first as­sumed of­fice in June 2019, where they de­feat­ed ret’d In­sp Sean Clarke, the then head of the Po­lice Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty.

Dick­son re­mained in of­fice for a sec­ond term when he de­feat­ed act­ing Sgt Nigel Williams, who chal­lenged him for the 2022 in­ter­nal elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s reg­u­la­tions, Dick­son, hav­ing served two terms, will not be al­lowed to of­fer him­self for the role of pres­i­dent a third time.

His vice pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Ish­mael Pitt, will be the par­ty’s can­di­date for pres­i­dent for this year’s elec­tion.

Dur­ing his re­marks, Dick­son said he felt the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion im­proved from Team Prime’s first term, where they had a “90 per cent achieve­ment,” to their sec­ond term in of­fice, where he said they “achieved every­thing” in their man­i­festo.

De­spite this, Dick­son ac­knowl­edged there was some crit­i­cism over the as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept a four per cent salary in­crease in De­cem­ber 2022.

He de­fend­ed this de­ci­sion, con­tend­ing that it was the best op­tion avail­able at the time and hint­ed that an­oth­er salary in­crease may be pos­si­ble with the com­ple­tion of a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise.

“I know that there is a lot of com­men­tary and to­day we even heard about the four per cent and we know it is not what our worth is and it is fit­ting for me to say this... there is no oth­er union or as­so­ci­a­tion that would have got­ten more than what was pre­sent­ed.

“We had some aces up our sleeve and we utilised those aces and that would have been - one we had a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise out­stand­ing, which we know would bring po­lice of­fi­cers clos­er to mar­ket val­ue in terms of your salary move­ment.”

Dick­son said the de­ci­sion to ac­cept the of­fer was man­dat­ed by the mem­ber­ship.

He added that the as­so­ci­a­tion looked for­ward to meet­ing with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, not­ing that he was not on­ly a for­mer po­lice­man, but al­so a for­mer serv­ing vice pres­i­dent in the po­lice as­so­ci­a­tion and felt he would be more at­tuned to of­fi­cers’ con­cerns.

Vice pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Ish­mael Pitt, re­ferred to some fi­nan­cial suc­cess­es ob­served from the as­so­ci­a­tion’s gas sta­tion ini­tia­tives, but said pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment would be the key to fur­ther de­vel­op­ment.

Re­fer­ring to ques­tions posed over how the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­ber­ship fees are used, Pitt said the par­ty con­tin­ued to use their dili­gence to care­ful­ly man­age fi­nances.

“The com­mon cry of the av­er­age mem­ber is: what are you do­ing with our mon­ey? and it is im­por­tant to en­sure that pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment takes place. It is the plat­form on which we can ven­ture in­to oth­er ar­eas.

“It means with pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, you need­ed oth­er av­enues of in­come oth­er than the sub­scrip­tion from mem­bers, so the ho­tel in To­ba­go came in­to be­ing and the gas sta­tions that re­alised some suc­cess.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed ret’d In­sp Sean Clarke, who chal­lenged Dick­son dur­ing the 2019 elec­tion. He said that while he was un­aware of who would chal­lenge Dick­son for the lead­er­ship of the as­so­ci­a­tion, there was a need for “fresh per­spec­tives” to be pro­mot­ed.

“Some peo­ple think that the need for change is not now, but as with every­thing in de­vel­op­ment, there’s al­ways need for change.

“Gone are the days where peo­ple think be­cause a per­son is pop­u­lar, they should re­main in that po­si­tion, we even saw it with the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the day, peo­ple want­ed change.”