Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

More than a month af­ter grad­u­at­ing, 29 new tran­sit po­lice of­fi­cers are still wait­ing to start their jobs. Guardian Me­dia was told that many of the of­fi­cers left per­ma­nent jobs to join this pro­fes­sion, hav­ing been se­lect­ed out of 2,000 ap­pli­cants.

Des­per­ate for an­swers and an in­come, the of­fi­cers have re­ceived no word on when they will be­gin their du­ties. Most re­cent­ly, they said they were told to “look for a job in the in­ter­im.”

The of­fi­cers grad­u­at­ed at the Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Of­fice’s (PAS­CO) Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters on De­cem­ber 11, 2024. Sev­en cor­po­rals and 22 con­sta­bles were pre­sent­ed to the me­dia by PAS­CO di­rec­tor Gale Charles and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds.

At the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter Hinds ad­dressed the of­fi­cers, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of their role in main­tain­ing law and or­der. “You have to be able to grad­u­ate up to the lev­el of ne­ces­si­ty ... If it re­quires me putting my hand on you and say­ing, ‘You are un­der ar­rest,’ that is what is re­quired ... And if you re­sist, and it re­quires that I use my taser in­stru­ment or my hand­cuffs, that is what is re­quired,” he said, as the sto­ry broad­cast­ed in the night­ly news.

PAS­CO al­so cel­e­brat­ed the of­fi­cers on its Face­book page, post­ing: “Their hard work, com­mit­ment, and de­ter­mi­na­tion have paid off, and we couldn’t be more proud! Let’s all wel­come them to their new roles as they con­tin­ue to make our tran­sit sys­tem safer and more se­cure.”

How­ev­er, since grad­u­at­ing, the of­fi­cers have been left in lim­bo. One of­fi­cer ex­plained the frus­tra­tion and fi­nan­cial strain:

“It is crazy. We do not know what is go­ing on. It is un­fair to us, know­ing that peo­ple have chil­dren to send to school, rent to pay, mort­gages to pay, and noth­ing is be­ing done. Every time we send a mes­sage or an email, we nev­er get a re­sponse. No­body is call­ing to say any­thing. We are just wait­ing at home, with­out a job, not know­ing what is go­ing on.”

An­oth­er of­fi­cer added, “Peo­ple who left their good per­ma­nent jobs to join tran­sit are now out of a job, with­out mon­ey. I have not paid rent for three months now. I could get evict­ed any­time. I have my car in­stal­ments to pay. I have to work Rideshare to pay back some­one I owe mon­ey to.”

The in­di­vid­u­als start­ed train­ing in Ju­ly and were ini­tial­ly sched­uled to fin­ish in Sep­tem­ber af­ter ten weeks. How­ev­er, the train­ing course took three months longer than ex­pect­ed, con­clud­ing in De­cem­ber af­ter 23 weeks. Their last stipend pay­ment was in No­vem­ber, which was al­so paid late.

As ad­ver­tised by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Jan­u­ary 2024, tran­sit po­lice are re­spon­si­ble for en­forc­ing law and or­der in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor. Their du­ties in­clude:

• Per­form­ing reg­u­lar and mo­bile pa­trols, mak­ing ar­rests, set­tling dis­putes, and as­sist­ing pas­sen­gers.

• Di­rect­ing and con­trol­ling traf­fic flow and en­forc­ing traf­fic laws.

• Con­duct­ing pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions of road traf­fic ac­ci­dents.

• In­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports and in­ci­dents of a crim­i­nal na­ture.

Charles ac­knowl­edged the sit­u­a­tion and asked the of­fi­cers to re­main pa­tient. She ex­plained that the de­lay is due to ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures, such as fi­nal­is­ing their con­tracts.

“They have been trained. We are wait­ing on the min­istry, the pub­lic ser­vice, to do the con­tracts for them. So they have to wait for the con­tracts to be done. We can’t put them out un­til they get a con­tract,” she said.

When asked about the of­fi­cers’ fi­nan­cial strug­gles, Charles replied:

“Yeah. Well, I un­der­stand that (that bills have to be paid), but you must al­so un­der­stand that the process of em­ploy­ment, with the SOE and this kind of thing, has to go from the top—from the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary. So they just have to hold on.”

De­spite re­as­sur­ances, the of­fi­cers re­main in the dark, un­sure when they will be de­ployed. “We are just here ask­ing ques­tions and call­ing around to find out what’s next. What’s the next step for us?” one of­fi­cer asked.