By Shamar Blunt
Barbados Police Service officers are set to benefit from bigger pay packets as the entire public service undergoes a regrading exercise, Attorney General Dale Marshall said Monday.
He made the disclosure to Barbados TODAY in response to Sergeant Mervin Grace, the president of the Barbados Police Association (BPA), who said that meagre cop salaries are to blame for several vacancies in the service.
Addressing the association’s concerns about the conditions of the detectives’ base in The City, he also promised they are to be relocated.
Acknowledging that the pay scale for officers joining the police today is insufficient, Marshall said there was no simple solution.
He said: “Unfortunately, we can’t just select the police service and say we are going to give the people at the bottom an increase. The reality is that if you increase the ones at the bottom, then there are relativities between the constables and the sergeants above them and the station sergeants and so on. That is not just a police issue, that is across the entire public service.
“The way to address this is to conduct a regrading exercise, and a regrading exercise seeks to look at what the current salaries are, what relativities are appropriate for the public service, and then recommendations are made as to what would be the appropriate salaries and conditions and so on.
“This regrading exercise has actually started; the Prime Minister has made several announcements about it, and she made it clear during the course of one of her speeches over the weekend that the matter of the police, nurses and teachers is receiving the attention of the government in terms of their salaries.”
During the BPA’s 62nd-anniversary church service on Sunday, Sergeant Grace also noted that one major recurring issue has been concerns about the health and environmental conditions at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at Central Police Station.
The Attorney General responded that the situation was a top priority for him and his office.
He told Barbados TODAY: “The matter of the relocation of the officers who currently work with the CID department and a few other departments from their current accommodation is receiving the active attention of the Office of the Attorney General. In fact, as recently as within the last two weeks, the members of the police high command visited a potential new location for that department and those officers.
“I received confirmation from the Commissioner of Police only last week that they were satisfied that the proposed new location is one that could work.”
While not revealing the new location for the detectives, he said his chambers and the Ministry of Housing are discussing the issue.
“While the Office of the Attorney General is ultimately responsible for the accommodation of its officers, the matter of the physical place is really a matter for the Ministry of Housing. We are engaging with the Ministry of Housing, the minister and I have had intensive discussions, and that is proceeding apace,” Marshall said.
The Attorney General added: “It will require a significant amount of refurbishing of the proposed property, but I am confident that we will get it done in the shortest possible time.”
