The Guyana Police Force (GPF) yesterday accused the Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) Omesh Satyanand of misleading the public in relation to the list of ranks recommended for promotion.
It was the latest salvo between the two on the question of promotions which should have been announced on January 1st this year. The PSC had told the police force that the promotions could not be finalised until February this year as the list had been tendered too late by the police. The police have refuted this.
Yesterday, the GPF found further fault in a statement that was made by Satyanand on the issue. Stabroek News has not received the PSC statement nor was it invited by the PSC to any forum where the matter was discussed.
A statement from the police said that Satyanand had stated that one of the ranks on the promotion list is on retirement leave and that a few ranks recommended for promotion had been interdicted from official duty. The police said that a perusal of the list yesterday showed that “all Officers, Inspectors and Sergeants recommended are performing duties currently; which means that the Chairman of the Police Service Commission (misled) the public when he made the statements that a rank recommended is on retirement leave and that a few ranks recommended were interdicted from official duty.”
The GPF added that the Police Seniority List is just a list of all the ranks in an order that shows who is senior to who. Should promotions be based on seniority alone then there would be no need for recommendations since all that would be required is to promote the most senior rank to fill the vacancy, the police noted. The GPF also reiterated that the Police Act Chapter 16:01 makes no mention of ranks passing appropriate qualifying examinations.
On New Year’s Day, the GPF clarified that the PSC wrote to the Commissioner of Police asking for the personal files of Officers, Inspectors and Sergeants since during October 2015 and also requested that identified ranks report to the Service Commission since then and this was complied with immediately.
The police said that the PSC never requested the recommendations for promotion from the Commissioner of Police until during December 2015 and this was acted upon.
During January 2015 the police say that the Commissioner of Police had written the Chairman of the PSC for information on the criteria used by the Service Commission in making promotions in the Police Force, in order to guide the Force Adminis-tration in making recommendations, but has not received a reply to date.
For that very reason, and taking into consideration the fact that the Service Commission had sent for the personal files and interviewed a number of ranks, the Force Administration did not volunteer a list of recommendations for promotion until it was asked for, the police said on New Year’s Day.
