Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bas­deo Pan­day has called for a pub­lic probe in­to the dis­cov­ery of il­le­gal guns, drugs and am­mu­ni­tion at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion over the week­end.

He blamed Gov­ern­ment and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph for the prob­lem as they failed to es­tab­lish a con­sis­tent work eth­ic to pre­vent cor­rup­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Pan­day stat­ed that in late 2007 Supt Chan­drab­han Ma­haraj, then at­tached to the South­ern Po­lice Di­vi­sion, made se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the Ser­vice. Pan­day not­ed that al­though there is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Ma­haraj's ac­cu­sa­tions noth­ing has been done to up­root rogue el­e­ments out of the Ser­vice.

"With mil­lions be­ing spent to up­lift the Po­lice Ser­vice, the PNM Gov­ern­ment is yet to make any head­way on crack­ing in­to the part­ner­ship be­tween rogue po­lice of­fi­cers and gangs," Pan­day said. "Cit­i­zens have lost faith in the Po­lice Ser­vice, they have im­ple­ment­ed self-im­posed cur­fews and they are mi­grat­ing in droves to oth­er lands to keep their fam­i­lies safe while the Gov­ern­ment plays with their lives," he said.