Senior Reporter
anna-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt
The Prison Officers Association (POA) is aware of a communique circulated to senior prison officials outlining how overtime payments will be handled in the future and has no objection to it, according to General Secretary Lester Logie.
Logie told Guardian Media the association had met with the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) and prison officials to clarify parts of the agreement.
“Some of the things would have been a breach of the agreement where officers’ official leave entitlements were concerned, and how many hours they were entitled to,” he said.
He said several issues had been clarified during three meetings with the CPO and the prison executive. The most recent meeting was held last Friday with acting Prison Commissioner Elvin Scanterbury and the prison administration.
Logie said the issues that had arisen from the document and were in dispute had been discussed and clarified.
“The accountability issues were not in dispute,” he said, adding, “We are all for accountability in terms of how the hours are recorded.
“However, we were concerned with the specific people that they wanted to determine must own overtime.”
Logie said that if 20 officers were assigned to a batch shift from 1 pm one day to 1 pm the following day, they should not be treated differently when overtime was calculated.
“You can’t tell me you’re only paying the supervisor, the infirmary officer and the ration room officer overtime,” he said.
“No, that’s wrong. That is discriminating. They are all on the same shift and are working the same hours.”
Logie said the Superintendent of Prisons had a major responsibility in determining overtime, since officers could earn extra hours only if the superintendent required them to stay on for a specific task or because their replacements had not arrived.
“Only the superintendent can determine that. So the superintendent has a responsibility based on our agreement in who earns extra hours,” he said.
Although a senior officer had issued the communique, Logie said, “The majority of the time, it is the Commissioner who determines who gets the overtime.”
“The Commissioner will determine who he pays arrears of overtime.”
Logie said the POA had received reports of retirees being paid arrears, as well as reports that accounting personnel had been instructed to select at least one name from a list of ten or 15 officers for payment while others remained unpaid.
He said main-shift officers were sometimes called in on weekends and public holidays to support other departments. They received compensatory time off, while officers in those departments were paid overtime by the Commissioner.
“I worked on the main shift for several years in the Operations Department before the Programmes Department was established, and I worked several of these extra duties whilst stationed at YTC, Carrera and Port-of-Spain. I never received overtime for my excess hours worked on evenings and weekends,” Logie said.
“I was given compensatory time off during the week for my excess hours worked.”
Main-shift officers are also entitled to an additional vacation day for each public holiday they are required to work. Logie claimed, however, that “the majority do not get back the day vacation”.
He also raised concerns about an officer attached to a former specialist security unit who, he said, had received $250,000 in overtime.
“When I wanted to know how he was paid, they couldn’t account for the extra hours he was working,” Logie said.
“He was not required to report at any prison, so the challenge is, how do you ask for accountability for a certain group of officers whose extra hours you can verify, but others whose extra hours you cannot verify because they are not under your control?”
Logie called for further investigation and clarity, saying officers were upset about payments to specialist units whose overtime hours could not be verified.
He said the issue pointed to a management problem and a lack of accountability.
“Because the managers who have to assign the extra hours officers have to work, why is it an issue to account for these hours?” he asked.
“The manager, the superintendent, is supposed to check all these things or his clerk will check the extra hours book.”
Logie said each prison had an official gate book in which officers’ arrival and departure times were recorded.
“When the Commissioner has to give an officer a case, if the officer is missing from duty or what have you, that’s the book they go to and check,” he said.
“So there are checks and balances in place.”
Logie said it was unfair to blame officers for delays in overtime payments.
“Persons are not carrying out the function that they were promoted to do, but you cannot blame the officer and you have his payment in limbo. Most of these payments are extra hours earned years ago, and you’re asking the officer now to go and find his pocket diary that he is required to give up after two years,” he said.
“That’s to avoid paying the officer,” he alleged.
Logie said money set aside by the Government to pay previous years’ overtime was instead being used by the Commissioner to pay current-year overtime to units whose hours, he claimed, had not yet been earned.
He said current-year overtime was not audited.
“They don’t go for an audit. It is paid in the current year, so auditors don’t come to audit the books to pay that. We have officers who are paid overtime to process the very overtime sheets,” he said.
“When we create these bureaucratic hurdles, we open an avenue for corrupt practices where officers are claiming that they are paying persons to get their current year and previous year overtime money owed.”
Logie said he did not want the issue to become as difficult as obtaining a Firearm User’s Licence.
“Basic record keeping seems to be the issue from where I sit. We should not throw it back on the officer to deny paying him his previous years’ overtime,” he said.
