Dear Editor,
I perused the recent list of police promotions announced by the Police Service Commission. It left me in a quandary. I am both happy and sad.
Happy that despite the wrangling, tangling and washing of their dirty linen in the print and electronic media and elsewhere the PSC and the GPF produced a reasonable list of promotions. There were a few minor surprises. This list is a vast difference from the previous one which was riddled with controversy and irregularities.
I am perturbed that the newly promoted assistant commissioners and the vast majority of the other promoted officers were apparently not given their correct dates of appointment, thus causing them to be denied some amount of money and other benefits. Eight cadet officers’ promotions were backdated to 2014. 01. 01 while two others received 2015. 01. 15 as date of appointments. The other eighty were lumped together as 2016.01.01. What has happened to consequential promotions? Has it gone through the window? Perhaps, a new appraisal system has jumped out of the sky and unjustly denied a large number of hard-working police officers money they justly deserved. As I understand it promotions are made when vacancies exist and the dates of promotions are tied to the dates the vacancies exist. This has been the common practice over the years. This procedure was not followed for the present and the last promotions. Maybe this is a new trend. If the paradigm has shifted then the officers should be so informed. If it has not, then the recent promoted officers should be given their correct dates of promotion. I can recall that when I was promoted to the rank of assistant commissioner of police my date of promotion was backdated three years prior to the date the promotion was published. Others on the list had diverse dates.
I hold no brief for the newly promoted officers. Although I am a police pensioner I still, however, have some interest in the police and more so the development of its officers be it financially or otherwise. Justice and fair play must prevail.
Yours faithfully,
Clinton Conway
