Today’s meeting between the Police Service Social and Welfare Association and Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) Stephanie Lewis will determine what course of action police officers will take in future. Association secretary Insp Michael Seales said yesterday the executive would enter the meeting with an open mind and would hope for the best.
Describing the meeting as the anticlimax, however, Seales added: “We are hoping that a favourable offer will be presented because the matter has dragged on long enough. It’s over five years police officers have been waiting to be paid the salaries they deserve.” Seales claimed there was also a “constructive delay” by the CPO in proceeding with salary negotiations.
He said the morale of the Police Service was low because officers have been waiting since 2008 to receive proper wages, adding members will be outside the CPO’s office today anxiously waiting on a decision. Asked what would be the next course of action should they not get a favourable offer, Seales said: “Well, then we will just sit back and watch things fall apart.”
Police had threatened to stay away from duties on Carnival Monday and Tuesday to express their disgust over the slow pace of negotiations but later turned up for work in full force. At a press briefing at the Besson Street Police Station two weeks ago, the association’s president Anand Ramesar had said the current status of salary negotiations was “very deplorable.”
He said the association had received a counter proposal from the CPO last September and attempted to hold talks with her two Tuesdays ago only to be denied after being told she had no instructions to go ahead with the discussion. “We were willing to agree in some of the areas of the counter proposal and the CPO could not agree to what she had proposed.
“This in itself would have generated frustration, causing members to take matters into their own hands,” Ramesar had said.