“I have friends who have Form 4 ac­count­ing and I can pro­vide that to per­sons if they do not un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween salaries and goods and ser­vices.”

A scathing crit­i­cism from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er aimed at the Fi­nance Min­istry af­ter the min­is­ter said there was no is­sue with re­gard to the re­lease of funds to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

On Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 19, Grif­fith said he was run­ning the TTPS on good­will with cred­i­tors as it does not have any mon­ey to pay its sup­pli­ers. He said the on­ly mon­ey avail­able to him was to pay salaries and has not re­ceived funds since March 2019 to pay for goods and ser­vices.

But in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when asked by Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Bar­ry Padarath about Guardian Me­dia’s re­port, Im­bert said it was al­le­ga­tions as he said his staff in­formed him that near $244 mil­lion was giv­en to the TTPS since March of this year.

He said: “$244 mil­lion, re­mem­ber Madame Speak­er that the al­le­ga­tion is we did not give one red cent for goods and ser­vices be­tween March and Sep­tem­ber, and I can say that I had a dis­cus­sion with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er not too long ago and I can say now that we in­tend to re­lease grant of cred­its for the en­tire al­lo­ca­tion for 2019 for the TTPS.”

But the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said he is not go­ing to sit idly by for per­sons to play with num­bers to give the im­pres­sion that all is right with the TTPS.

“One can­not use per­son­al ex­pen­di­ture which is salaries and box it in­to goods and ser­vices and boast about funds giv­en to the TTPS,” Grif­fith said.

Fur­ther­more, Grif­fith said the $244 mil­lion has al­ready been spent be­cause that was the first-ever dis­burse­ment giv­en to the TTPS for goods and ser­vices and there were out­stand­ing bills to pay.

“The mon­ey that was giv­en in March was to sat­is­fy bills we had from Sep­tem­ber last year, be­cause re­mem­ber noth­ing was giv­en to us from Sep­tem­ber last year to March this year.”

Grif­fith said af­ter that the TTPS still owed sup­pli­ers al­most $112 mil­lion for the sec­ond half of the fis­cal year (March-Sep­tem­ber 2019). He said $56 mil­lion was giv­en a few days ago and he’s hop­ing to get the next $56 mil­lion soon as the mon­ey goes to­ward pay­ing to main­tain po­lice ve­hi­cles, equip­ment and util­i­ties.

And while the Fi­nance Min­is­ter told the Par­lia­ment that the TTPS has re­ceived near­ly 98 per­cent of its al­lo­ca­tion the Com­mis­sion­er says his math shows that up un­til the $56 mil­lion that was re­ceived re­cent­ly, there was still a 40 per­cent short­fall in their al­lo­ca­tion for goods and ser­vices.

Grif­fith said he does not want to get in­to a tit for tat with the Min­is­ter but said it would be un­fair and disin­gen­u­ous to pre­tend the short­fall in al­lo­ca­tion was not an is­sue.