Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

A large group of Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers (SRPs) is threat­en­ing to bring con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) if the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) fails to ho­n­our a court or­der.

The mat­ter stems from a de­lay in pay­ing them salary ar­rears af­ter they were ab­sorbed in­to the TTPS in 2009.

In a judg­ment on March 21, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held a ju­di­cial re­view case over the de­lay brought by 54 of­fi­cers.

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group’s lawyers, led by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, claimed that they were work­ing as full-time SRP dri­vers when they were ab­sorbed in­to the TTPS in late 2009.

At the time, their salaries were sup­posed to be ad­just­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion and Com­pen­sa­tion Plan for 2005-2007.

A Cab­i­net note was pre­pared, al­lo­cat­ing $10,983,600 to make retroac­tive pay­ments to 270 SRPs, in­clud­ing the even­tu­al lit­i­gants.

In a let­ter dat­ed May 28, 2025, and ad­dressed to Adi­ta Ram­du­lar, the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the TTPS, at­tor­ney De­sirée Sankar wrote, “As of date of this let­ter, we have not re­ceived any fur­ther cor­re­spon­dence from you con­cern­ing the up­date and dis­burse­ment of the said funds. The claimants and oth­er SRP of­fi­cers out­side of Pro­jec­tion 1000 have long since been await­ing the re­lease of said funds and con­tin­ue to do so.”

Sankar added, “In light of the same, we call up­on you to forth­with pro­vide an up­date on when the said pay­ment of ar­rears owed to the claimants and oth­er SRP of­fi­cers out­side of Pro­jec­tion 1000 would be ef­fect­ed and fur­ther re­quest that we be pro­vid­ed with the au­dit­ed work­sheets be­fore said pay­ments are is­sued.”

Sankar warned that fail­ure to com­ply with the March 21 court or­der will re­sult in con­tempt pro­ceed­ings be­ing ini­ti­at­ed against the of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

When the of­fi­cers, through their lawyers, sent le­gal cor­re­spon­dence threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion in 2022, the TTPS Le­gal Unit claimed that the de­lay in rec­ti­fy­ing the is­sue was due to dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing work­sheets for the of­fi­cers need­ed to cal­cu­late their salary ar­rears.

When the unit even­tu­al­ly ob­tained the doc­u­ments, it claimed that the po­lice com­mis­sion­er need­ed time to con­sid­er such.

They filed the case af­ter they failed to re­ceive an ad­e­quate re­sponse by May 2023.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles is­sued a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the han­dling of the is­sue. She al­so grant­ed an or­der com­pelling the TTPS to make the pay­ments to the of­fi­cers.

The TTPS was al­so or­dered to pay the of­fi­cers’ le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case.