The Barbados Police Association warned that policing is becoming an increasingly hazardous profession and said it was preparing to ask the government for a risk allowance if a current job regrading exercise fails to recognise the dangers officers face.
BPA President Inspector Wendley Carter told Barbados TODAY that if the current public service regrading exercise fails to address the situation, it will propose that the Mia Mottley administration pay members of The Barbados Police Service what they now prefer to call a “risk allowance” rather than a “hazard allowance”.
He said: “We are looking to ask for it now because we put forward a hazard allowance before — that was under the last president — but I can’t say much about whether it was acknowledged. But we are waiting until after the regrading exercise to put some more things to the government. We are trying to get the members to stay, because we got a lot of people that left and gone to the Central Bank; some gone to The UWI. Because if I left the police service to go to the Central Bank or The UWI, that means I am getting more than what I am getting in the service.
“The young people are looking at what they can get now. They aren’t looking at retirement and what they can get at 65 years. They aren’t looking down the road. We are trying to move away from ‘hazard allowance’ because it might be a risk… because there are different types of risks in the police service. We prefer to call it a risk allowance. So, that is one of the things we are thinking of to go forward within the year.
“This allowance would cover the whole police service because there are a lot of risks involved in this job now. Before, it wasn’t that riskful, because you could be off duty, and if a man knows you are a police officer, there is still a risk there. You could be off-duty and an offence happens, you are expected to perform as a police [officer].”
He continued: “In this job, we got a lot of risks. Recently, we had the situation where the police that was going along and got shot at the other day. So, we got a lot of risks. They are doing a regrading exercise now, so we are still looking at things for the uniform section, and also for the CID, and all of the police service.
“If the regrading benefits us, it would stop us from pushing forward certain things; but if it doesn’t benefit us, we would have to fight to see what we can get, because you don’t want to get less than the regrading. So, the regrading will tell us if we have to go forward with some of the proposals that we have.”
Carter also suggested that the government take another look at the challenges now faced by the service in attracting new recruits, particularly relating to pay levels.
“People looking at recruitment; you can’t get the numbers. Nobody isn’t coming for the jobs, because if I see my friend with a little salary in the police service and I could get a bigger one somewhere else in the private sector, I am not coming into the police service. So, they got to look at that.”
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
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