POLICE $$ CRISIS

The TT Police Service was allocated about $2.3 billion in the 20018-2019 budget, but today, it was barely scraping by, unless it was at the bottom of the funding bucket.
Police Commissioner Gary Griffith yesterday admitted that the TTPS was in dire straits and had not received any funding other than officers' salaries for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. He said, as a result, the service had been unable to pay its other bills generated in that time period.
Griffith was the focus of inquiry when the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) met yesterday on the examination of the expenditure and internal control of the TTPS for the Financial Year 2018-19 at the J Hamilton Maurice Room, Parliament building.

Committee member Wade Mark questioned whether inadequate funding could contribute to a slowing down of objectives or initiatives that the TTPS might have on the agenda and, therefore, needed to have resources released in an adequate amount and timely manner.
He also asked which areas of the TTPS were inadequately supplied with funds even though they were budgeted and approved by Parliament, but were now in a deficit and adversely affecting the CoP's ability to carry out his duties.

Griffith did not hesitate or sugar-coat his response."At times there was a slowing down, but it has now come to a crashing halt. I am not asking for a requirement for more resources than what has been approved in the budget. I can use some travelling, uniform, electricity, telephone, water, maintenance, training, everything...we have a recurrent expenditure.
"At this time, sir, we have not received allocation of any for fiscal year 2018-2019, apart from salaries. What I am trying to get now is $47 million to pay off bills that the TTPS owes debtors that was approved in 2017-18 fiscal year to pay off their bills from December 2017-December 2018. I have not even started getting funds for 2018-2019, but when this happens it affects the image of the TTPS because we have to rent some police stations. If we don't pay on time police officers can be evicted from their home, which is a police station.

"We have situations where TSTT... they will disconnect us. We have situations where prisoners will not be fed properly. I am very concerned. If you want a police service to operate in an effective manner, if there is an allocation and we have not adhered to the allocation then we have not done our job."

In responding to a Newsday article entitled Squeeze for Police which appeared on January 13, the Ministry of Finance said it was erroneous that the ministry had only released funds to meet obligations for salaries for the TTPS.

A release from the ministry said, "This article is wholly incorrect. In particular, based on a December 2018 letter from the Commissioner of Police for $80 million in funding for goods and services for the Police Service and, in consultation with the Commissioner, the Ministry of Finance has so far released $20 million to the Police for equipment, materials, services and supplies. A further $20 million is scheduled to be released for this purpose within the next two weeks and a balance of $40 million in February 2019."

Griffith admitted they received $20 million for projects for starting the process for tasers, pepper spray, uniforms, dash-cams, and parts for vehicles.
However, he said, "Some of our debtors have started pulling away from us, so it has affected us greatly towards the repairs of vehicles, maintenance, cost and refurbishment."

When questioned about the $327,171 million allocated for goods and services, head of finance, TTPS, Rosalind Hart said the money was utilised to pay for bills from 20017-2018.
"We have not received funding to pay off 2018-2019 expenditure. We have not received (our) allocation to pay for consumables."
Asked how much they received so far, Hart said, "Just shy of $53 million."
Committee chairman Brigid Annisette-George noticed there were several columns in the expenditure sheet with zero commitments, and queried that.
"You have an expenditure to the end of February of zero to standing commitments. How are you paying them?"
Hart responded: "With maintenance of vehicles sometimes the suppliers were willing to give us the goods on credit pending a receipt release. These commitments are what we have in the vote books where the regulations would forbid us from entering items for which we do not have releases. Other expenditures are reflected in a further expenditure document and that information is communicated to the budgeting division."
Griffith added that what they had been doing was improper practice.
"We are applying for things on credit and we are hoping that we would pay a supplier in the near future. That is the trend we are actually running, based on the hope that the previous persons we have worked with, based on their good hearts, will continue to provide. Because if they do not, there are many things that will collapse."

Head of IT Micklos Badaloo admitted that the systems were ageing and, because of lack of funding, they were having problems convincing some of the vendors who had previously helped out to help the TTPS now.

"As the Commissioner stated, it is coming to a crash because they are not as kind because they too are having problems. A lot of the programmes that we had are on hold.