UNIONS representing members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) in their fight for proper compensation have denied that they have rejected a proposed pay package from Government, and have indicated that they are “batting carefully” before signing off on anything final.

Leaders of the Police Officers’ Association (POA), the Jamaica Police Federation (JPF) and the United District Constables’ Association (UDCA), who met at the Police Officers’ Club on Hope Road in St Andrew on Thursday to give an update on the current wage negotiations, said reports in the media which claim they have rejected the latest offer from Government are false and misleading.

Senior Superintendent of Police Wayne Cameron, chairman of the POA, said the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service has been written to on numerous occasions to address a number of issues the officers are faced with, but said there has been no favourable response.

On Tuesday, during the opening of the 2023/2024 Budget Debate in Parliament, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke encouraged the police and other public sector groups to sign the new compensation agreement before the March 31 window for this fiscal year closes. Clarke had indicated that the Government has set aside $10.2 billion to pay rank and file members of the JCF, $1 billion to pay district constables, and $600 million for members of the officer ranks.

“Having highlighted the challenges in writing and at meetings and not getting a favourable response is what has become frustrating to the officers’ association and joint groups. That is what is affecting us, so when pronouncements are made about $600 million being available to pay the officers, we cannot accept the $600 million with the types of issues that we have. We have to remember that after today there is tomorrow and there is going to be next year and we are not going to hold ourselves accountable for any issues that are not going to work to the advantage of the officer core and the members of the JCF. We are asking for resilience from our officers. Let us stay the course because we have to fix these issues. We cannot go forward with them.

“The point is that we cannot make a proper analysis of the proposal because of the anomalies that exist. There are one or two aspects of it that appear agreeable. We have asked that our service pay remain as a standalone and not be absorbed into salary and for more than one reason. It speaks to your level of patriotism and dedication to this service and to this country and we insisted that that remains a standalone. The proposal that has been made, especially for people with more service, for instance 30 years and over, the percentage that has been put forward we find to be agreeable. We have made some amount of progress but until the proposal is sorted out, we just cannot move forward,” Cameron said.

Cameron pointed out that compensation review meetings commenced on May 26, 2022 and at that meeting, the POA interfaced with the finance minister and technocrats from his ministry.

“We specifically took note of the four guiding principles that the minister outlined, that it should be simple and easily understood; fair and equitable; recognisable and reward performance; sustainable and affordable. He has repeated these quite frequently and it is our intent to hold him to these principles, and so we met on six occasions since May 26 last year and a proposal was made to us somewhere about October 4, 2022. We looked at it and we saw a number of difficulties with the proposal. Chief among the challenges we had with that proposal was that the pay scale of inspectors and assistant superintendents were made at the same dollar figure and the points were the same,” he pointed out.

Cameron said an officer cannot be paid at the same level as an inspector. He pinpointed another problem being that the same dollar figure at the top of the nine-point pay scale for superintendents exists at the starting point of the scale for senior superintendents.

“Senior superintendents and a superintendents can never be paid at the same level, at no point at all. These issues we have pointed out repeatedly to the minister of finance. The commissioner of police was present at our last meeting on February 1, 2023. All of these and our other issues were highlighted again and this was after we wrote, December 5, outlining our challenges. We formalised it and sent it to the minister and we came back to the February 1 meeting this year without those issues being addressed,” he said.