Retired head of the Public Service Reginald Dumas has described the Police Service Commission (PSC) as “an operational monster.” Dumas, who was the feature speaker at yesterday’s luncheon hosted by the Trinidad Union Club at Nicholas Towers, Port-of-Spain, also spoke on the operations of the Teaching Service and the Public Service Commissions. He said under the 1976 Constitution, the PSC had the same powers as the Public and Teaching Commissions.
He added: “But all that changed in 2006 and later in 2007, and for personal and political reasons, we have saddled ourselves with an operational monster. “Sections 122 and 123 of the Constitution tell us how leaden-footed the process has become.” He said to choose a police commissioner or deputy police commissioner, the commission must nominate people and submit those names to the President. That, Dumas added, only occurred after taxpayers had paid huge sums to a head-hunting firm.
He said: “Only after the Parliament approves can the commission make appointments. In other words the commissioner and his deputies are now, in effect, political appointees “So also, by the way, are the members of the commission themselves, under the present dispensation. Ask yourself whether this is the right way for the country to go.”
He also asked whether against that background, acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams showed discretion in publicly praising former national security minister Jack Warner when Warner had just resigned. The short tenure of former police commissioner Dwayne Gibbs was also brought to the fore by Dumas, who said there was unseemly public squabbling over who had the legal right to terminate his contract. He asked: “Was it the director of personnel administration? Was it the commission?”
And yet Section 123 (1) of the Constitution seemed clear in that it gives the commission the power to ‘remove from office and exercise disciplinary control over’ the commissioner and his deputies. Saying the Police Service had found itself in “asininity,” Dumas added that the entire process had become “so cumbersome.” “And this in a period of high crime, when citizens expect their fears to be speedily allayed,” he added.