Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams will be reporting to the office as normal tomorrow. Dispelling rumours circulating yesterday that he would be proceeding on vacation from July 1, after his contract as head of the Police Service had not been renewed, Williams stated: “That information is totally incorrect.”
Approached to address the claims during his attendance at the Traffic Safety Awards at the Ministry of Works and Transport, Port-of-Spain, Williams said: “I don’t know anything about going on vacation on Friday or any issue with any contract.
“On Friday, I will be here. I have no contract. I am a police officer employed on what we can call an indeterminate period of employment.”
Williams further explained: “As a public officer, I can work until 60 and beyond 60, there can be extensions by way of the law. I am on no fixed-term contract.” He said the only police commissioner to have been offered a fixed term contract was former head of the T&T Police Service, Dwayne Gibbs.
The Canadian-born Gibbs and his compatriot, Jacl Ewatski, who held the post of Deputy Commissioner during the same period, resigned with more than a year of their three-year contracts remaining. Their resignation letters were dated July 26, 2012 and took effect on August 7, 2012.
Former chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), Prof Ramesh Deosaran, last month labelled the acting appointments of the nation’s top cop “an undue embarrassment and quite likely a record heading for the Guinness World Book of Records.”
He said Williams’ acting appointments, along with his string of deputies, had spanned a period of close to three years, having been renewed every six months since 2013.