Hours af­ter 15 con­tract­ed work­ers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was ter­mi­nat­ed, they are now de­mand­ing that they be paid a lump sum for the re­main­der of their con­tracts which could amount to mil­lions of dol­lars.

Yes­ter­day, they said are yet to be told how the fi­nan­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion for the re­main­der of their con­tracts will be ho­n­oured, as no terms and con­di­tions were out­lined.

On Mon­day, the 15 con­tract­ed work­ers, who were all hired by for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, were hand­ed their ter­mi­na­tion let­ters by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob.

Four oth­er peo­ple who worked with the TTPS were al­so re­lieved of their du­ties with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Guardian Me­dia me­dia was al­so re­li­ably in­formed that two sec­re­taries and a grounds­man were al­so sent home.

The dis­missals came hours af­ter an Ex­press news­pa­per ar­ti­cle wrote about peo­ple hired by Grif­fith and the salaries they were earn­ing.

Ear­li­er this month Ja­cob was ap­point­ed ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, which fol­lowed the court rul­ing that the ap­point­ments of him­self as act­ing Com­mis­sion­er and that of Gary Grif­fith were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Ja­cob in­sist­ed that the move to ter­mi­nate the work­ers was a cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise to chan­nel re­sources on the ground.

He said the sav­ings will run in­to mil­lions.

Among the 15 ter­mi­nat­ed were TTPS’ Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­ag­er Fran­cis Joseph, Events Man­ag­er Lisa Ghany and Paul Na­hous, con­sul­tant, firearms and am­mu­ni­tion au­dit im­ple­men­ta­tion and re­train­ing ser­vices.

On the heels of the fir­ing, for­mer po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith claimed there is “bla­tant po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence” in the run­ning of the TTPS.

Grif­fith cit­ed bud­getary cuts as a rea­son for this move as a “bo­gus ar­gu­ment” since on­ly the civil­ian staff hired by him are be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed and their con­tracts be­ing paid off, which meant that tax­pay­ers will be foot­ing a bill for no work.

The work­ers’ con­tracts are due to ex­pire in 2022 and 2023.

Five will ex­pire in 2023 with the re­main­ing ten ex­pir­ing next year.

The month­ly salary of the low­est-paid con­tract­ed work­er was $18,000 while the high­est was list­ed at $42,000.

One line in the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters, signed by Ja­cob stat­ed “you will be com­pen­sat­ed for the un­ex­pired pe­ri­od of your con­tract.”

In try­ing to make sense of the ter­mi­na­tion let­ter, one work­er said “the un­der­stand­ing is that we would be paid for what­ev­er is out­stand­ing on our con­tracts. That was part of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But to our sur­prise, no terms and con­di­tions were giv­en.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ghany said she was “still try­ing to make sense of it (let­ter) and un­der­stand what the terms and con­di­tions would be. Those did not seem clear from the ini­tial cor­re­spon­dence they were giv­en.”

An­oth­er af­fect­ed work­er, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty told Guardian Me­dia “as of now we don’t know what is the pay­ment plan. Nor­mal­ly when you ter­mi­nate some­body in the let­ter of ter­mi­na­tion ex­plains a pay­ment plan....this was not in­clud­ed in our let­ters yes­ter­day.”

When he in­quired about the method of pay­ment from Ja­cob, the work­er said the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er said he would have to talk to the head of fi­nance to find out.

The TTPS’ HR de­part­ment al­so could not shed any light.

“They say they would have to ap­proach the Fi­nance Min­istry to get the mon­ey if they have to pay us in a lump sum.”

The ter­mi­nat­ed work­er said he pre­ferred to be paid all his mon­ey up­front for the re­main­der of his con­tract rather than to re­ceive a month­ly pay­ment un­til his con­tract ends in 2022.

“I told Mr Ja­cob I want to ap­ply for my NIS and I don’t want them to tell me that I am still be­ing paid by the TTPS be­cause when you ap­ply for NIS you have to be un­em­ployed. So if you give me all my mon­ey now I could go to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and ap­ply for my NIS. If you pay­ing me month­ly un­til Ju­ly of 2022 that means you are hold­ing me back.”

He es­ti­mat­ed his lump-sum pay­ment to be $195,000.

An­oth­er ter­mi­nat­ed work­er said he pre­ferred all his mon­ey in a big tranche.

“You see that al­lows me to move on. If I get paid every month it means that I will be still tied to the TTPS un­til my con­tract is up but I am not work­ing for them. If you pay me a lump sum I could cut my ties with the TTPS and I am on my own.”

Stat­ing that next Oc­to­ber, his con­tract will come to an end, he dis­agreed that the ter­mi­na­tion by Ja­cob was part of a cost-cut­ting mea­sure for the TTPS.

“Whether a lump sum is paid or not it can­not be a cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise be­cause you are still pay­ing us un­til the end of the con­tract. So where are you sav­ing mon­ey, in that? So that state­ment (by Ja­cob) that this move was to save is ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous. You are pay­ing the ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees un­til their con­tracts come to an end and you are not us­ing them. So you now have 19 peo­ple you are pay­ing to stay home when you could have used them to help the TTPS and just not re­new their con­tracts. This just does not make sense.”

The work­er es­ti­mat­ed his lump-sum pay­ment at $320,000

Re­peat­ed calls to DCP Ja­cob’s cell­phone yes­ter­day went unan­swered.

Fi­nance Min­istry clar­i­fies

cost of con­tracts

Yes­ter­day, a state­ment from the Fi­nance Min­istry sought to clar­i­fy the cost of the con­tract em­ploy­ment in the TTPS.

In re­al­i­ty, the re­lease stat­ed “as can been seen from the es­ti­mates of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture un­der Item 02 – Goods and Ser­vices/001 – Po­lice Ser­vice (Trinidad)/16 – con­tract em­ploy­ment, the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture on con­tract em­ploy­ment in the TTPS in 2016 was $61.6 mil­lion, down from $67.2 mil­lion in 2015.

“In fact, the ex­pen­di­ture on this item showed a down­ward trend from 2015 to 2018, from $67.2 mil­lion to $54.1 mil­lion. How­ev­er, ex­pen­di­ture on con­tract em­ploy­ment in the TTPS be­gan to in­crease af­ter 2018, ris­ing from $54.1 mil­lion in 2018 to $88.8 mil­lion in 2021, an in­crease of $34.7 mil­lion per year over the pe­ri­od 2018-2021,” the re­lease stat­ed.