sunday, November 29, 2009
The Belize Times
13
Today’s Belizean Policeman: Overworked, Underpaid and Unwilling to Continue Isabel Vasquez Police officers throughout Belize City believe that they are being discriminated against and unfairly treated, and threaten that they will not tolerate the situation in silence any more. With excessive workloads anyway, not to mention increasing meaningless paperwork to be undertaken by all officers, recent increments of patrol duties and event attendance threaten to destroy the ‘goodwill’ of many long-ser ving police officers throughout the City. Several police officers (principally based at Queen Street and Racoon Street branches) complain they are now expected to work longer hours over more days each week – without receiving so much as a cent over their usual pay. Various police officers who are based in Belize City are commuters who travel daily from their out-district homes anyway, meaning that they put in significant travelling hours on a weekly basis over and above their hours ‘on duty’. Several such officers have been vocally complaining to the
Belize Times this week about the extra commitments they are being forced to agree to – merely to maintain their jobs. Many long-standing police offi cers who have served their country for years (on a 45-hour/ week contract) are now being forced to accept longer hours, extra patrol shifts – and even attend nightly sports matches conducted by City high schools merely to please their superiors and ensure job security. Several police officers are
now tallying up excessive overtime on weekends and in the evenings, yet they are only permitted to claim ‘compensation’ in the form of extra time off work after every two special patrols undertaken. No extra pay is offered – despite the fact that many commuting officers are forced to seek alternative accommodation in the City after late night shifts, or are forced to commission a private vehicle to carry them home. Yet even more disgraceful is the fact that these hardworking police
officers, who have a troublesome job at best in today’s deteriorating Belize, cannot even seem to get the time off they are owed (and promised) for fulfilling their extra duties. Offi cers complain that various days (including every Monday!) is ‘not appropriate’ for extra time off – even if they have been forced to work extra shifts on a Sunday. No wonder social decay is spreading at an alarming rate. If our best police officers – loyal, ‘essential service’ public servants – aren’t treated correctly, what hope is there for the rest of us?
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