Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the heads of the nine police divisions in T&T need to be more accountable to citizens. He made the comment while speaking about the level of crime at an indoor meeting for the constituencies of Arima and D’Abadie/O’Meara at the Malabar Phase 4 Community Centre on Tuesday.
Rowley, who asked the crowd whether they could name the people in charge of any of the police divisions, expressed no surprise when they said no.
“You know why, because there is no accountability in the system and the people who should be in charge are hiding in the shadows and nobody knows who is in charge and when something happens you point at the Minister of National Security, you point at the Commissioner of Police and the divisional heads are unknown to you,” Rowley said.
“Well that is going to have to change and when somebody is killed or there is a problem in Sangre Grande or in Tobago, what we expect is that the person in charge of that division should be able to come before you, the people. Only then will you get accountability in the Police Service,” he added.
Rowley reminded the crowd there were nine police divisions in the country, eight in Trinidad and one in Tobago. He said he was not trying to berate the Police Service but asked the crowd whether the country had the type of Police Service people wanted.
“I tell you this not to berate the Police Service because there are men and women in the Police Service going beyond the call of duty and putting their lives in the line of fire everyday for us.
“But by the same token, there are others who are not pulling their weight and the management has to improve so that all of them could give us the best that they are capable of,” he said.
Rowley also said he had taken a note to Cabinet to change the process of appointing a Commissioner of Police.
“We want to make sure that they have a properly installed Commissioner of Police in place. We went to the Cabinet and changed the arrangements and changed the order to start the process to appoint the Commissioner of Police and that is underway,” he said. He said the process of accountability started with management at the top.
“It starts with the proper appointment and the comfortable appointment of a substantive office holder at the top and the PNM is going to do that,” he added.
Heads of divisions are:
1. Snr Supt Sacenarine Mahabir: Northern.
2. Snr Supt Basdeo Ramdhanie: Western.
3. Snr Supt John Trim: Eastern.
4. Snr Supt Joanne Archie: Tobago.
5. Snr Supt MacDonald Jacob: Port-of-Spain.
6. Snr Supt Jayson Forde: Central.
7. Snr Supt Adeline St Louis-Pesnell: North Eastern.
8. Snr Supt Irwin Hackshaw: Southern.
9. Snr Supt Nazrool Hosein: South Western.
Getting it right
A article published on Page A15 of yesterday’s paper incorrectly attributed comments to Senior Counsel Russel Martineau, who represented the Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs in an case in the Court of Appeal against two gas station operators.
Martineau did not admit his client “condoned an illegality” by allowing service stations to operate without valid petroleum retail marketing licences over the past five years. He also did not submit that former Energy Minister Kelvin Ramnarine suspended the licence procedure in mid-2010, whilst the ministry conducted a review of it.
The procedure of renewals was suspended during the tenure of Ramnarine’s predecessor Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan. The errors are regretted.