CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young chal­lenged Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment last night over a pro­posed in­crease in po­lice over­time spend­ing, ques­tion­ing whether the fig­ure was jus­ti­fied and how it com­pared to salary costs.

Young fo­cused on Head 64, Sub­head 01, Per­son­al Ex­pen­di­ture, Item 001, in par­tic­u­lar Sub-item 03 cov­er­ing over­time, which showed a re­quest­ed vari­a­tion of an ad­di­tion­al $100 mil­lion. He asked whether the over­time al­lo­ca­tion, de­scribed in the es­ti­mates as pay­ments of al­lowances and over­time to month­ly paid po­lice of­fi­cers, was linked to in­creased call-out time dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

“Mem­ber, the an­swer is no,” Alexan­der replied when asked if the in­crease was tied to the SoE.

Alexan­der said the over­time re­flect­ed nor­mal op­er­a­tional de­mand with­in the po­lice ser­vice, not SOE-re­lat­ed du­ties. Young pushed back, point­ing to what he said was a re­vised over­time pro­vi­sion of $500 mil­lion for 2026.

“Any of the ex­tra hours that are nec­es­sary to be worked as a re­sult of the State of Emer­gency, you’re say­ing that it is a nor­mal fig­ure for the po­lice ser­vice to have an over­time bill to the tax­pay­er of half a bil­lion dol­lars?” he asked.

Alexan­der said the fig­ure had to be viewed in con­text, adding that it was ac­tu­al­ly low­er than the pre­vi­ous year and re­flect­ed wider pres­sures with­in the ser­vice. Young then com­pared the over­time fig­ure to salary costs, not­ing that salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowance for the po­lice ser­vice stood at $1.2 bil­lion.

“So you are telling the pop­u­la­tion that the po­lice ser­vice is run­ning an over­time bill of $500 mil­lion dol­lars, where­as the nor­mal salary is just $1.2 bil­lion dol­lars?” he asked.

Alexan­der urged him to ver­i­fy the fig­ures be­ing used.

“Mem­ber, check your da­ta to make sure that you’re on the same page,” he said. Young replied that he was work­ing di­rect­ly from the bud­get doc­u­ments be­fore the com­mit­tee, cit­ing the $1.2 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for salaries and a $500 mil­lion pro­vi­sion for over­time, along with a fur­ther $120 mil­lion in­crease un­der salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowance.

He ques­tioned whether it was re­al­is­tic for over­time to reach half a bil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly, re­call­ing that in pre­vi­ous years the de­bate had cen­tred on fig­ures well be­low $100 mil­lion.

“There is no way that is a raise from past years of the po­lice be­ing owed over­time in half a bil­lion dol­lars,” he said.

Alexan­der main­tained that the fig­ures re­flect­ed in­her­it­ed con­di­tions with­in the po­lice ser­vice and broad­er staffing chal­lenges. “You all left the po­lice ser­vice heav­i­ly de­plet­ed, so what you’re see­ing here is just a con­tin­u­a­tion of what you all would have left for us to deal with,” he said.