SECURITY Minister Dr Horace Chang on Thursday clarified what is considered overtime within the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and sought to clear up any confusion that still exists after the overtime system was restructured under the Government’s revamped compensation package.

In response to queries by Opposition legislator Julian Robinson at Thursday’s sitting of the Standing Finance Committee, Chang noted that many members of the constabulary are looking at overtime as added hours but he argued that it is not, as “it’s a completely different system”.

He pointed out that there is no such thing as normal or routine overtime and that overtime is a sign of some level of shortage or excess demand which kicks in “when you’re short-staffed or increased activity demands a higher number of persons to work and this is calculated on a weekly basis. “The superintendents in charge, ASPs (assistant superintendents) and inspectors have to arrange additional manpower in the areas of need,” the security minister said.

“Overtime is when the demand requires it. So, if for this weekend you need somebody to work because there is illness, a riot breaks out in a particular area, or a gang war starts somewhere, so we have to put more special ops team out [who] are going to work longer hours,” Chang said.

He said that if there is no projection that police will need overtime and they have normal demands, then “you don’t have overtime”.

Added Chang: “We’re coming from a system where we had a very untidy compensation system. In order to provide some additional income to police officers who were working long and hard hours, every policeman was paid for this 10-hour extra per week. It was 40, 50 hours whether they did work or not. It was part of treating the police differently and that system left some confusion.”

Chang was referring to rank-and-file cops’ acceptance during negotiations under the compensation review, of a 10-hour overtime payment from the Government, regardless of actual hours worked, until the new overtime system was put in place.

The national security minister said he believes there was an attempt to make mischief by some people “because of the way the whole compensation went and we had a level of reasonable acceptance”.

He told the committee that the police were being told that if they work 10 hours for the day they did two hours overtime, and if they work for 20 hours, they get 10 hours overtime.

“[It] doesn’t work like that. The legitimate work hours is 40 hours per week and if you are given time beyond that. So, if you work two days for 20 hours each day, you do 40 hours and you get a week off. That’s industrial practice. So you can work three days, do 40 hours and you get a week off, come back three days the next week. It is not good to do that in practice because extended hours lead to stress and tiredness and [with] the police’s use of high-end machinery, you run into problems,” Chang said, noting that confusion was being spread because of the misconception about how overtime should work.

“[Previously], you had this plethora of allowances. It was a very inefficient and inappropriate system which had left some confusion. We now have a structured, organised overtime system. We have improved the basic salary of police officers. So, in addition to merging allowances they were given an increase. The concept at the beginning of their career [is that they] would get $895,000 as their salary. There were some additional things like housing, all kinds of things, allowances to bring them up to maybe $1.5 [million] and there was this added hours which was part of that additional income,” the minister explained.

“Their salary moved up, allowances were absorbed, and as at the 1st of April [2023] they are now nearer to $3 million, which is not a high income but a much more reasonable allowance to the police officers and it’s structured throughout the system. They have nine increments as opposed to six, so…they can move up the scale a bit,” he added.

Chang further argued that the entire compensation was designed to restructure and put police officers on a better basis “which I think the general leadership at both the [Jamaica Police] Federation and the officer level understand and appreciate”.

“The hangover of a plethora of little things done to give some additional money is still there. Once explained, they are all satisfied with…[getting a] better income for policemen,” he said, pointing out that when there was a plethora of allowances, a retiring police officer normally retired into poverty.

Last month, in an interview with the
Jamaica Observer, chairman of the Jamaica Police Federation Corporal Rohan James said some cops have been receiving only partial overtime payments while others were receiving none, despite the high command’s insistence that overtime was being paid out promptly and accurately. This followed a claim that there was a temporary interruption of overtime payments to cops.

The federation, in 2019, had filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Security, the attorney general, and the police commissioner, complaining that its members had been working more than 40 hours per week without being paid.

The federation argued that this was in breach of the 2008 heads of agreement.

In June 2022 the Supreme Court, in ruling partially in favour of the federation, said each of the heads of agreement between the federation and the ministries was binding on the Government as they “created a legitimate expectation” from rank-and-file cops that they would be paid for the overtime they had worked.

The Government was then ordered to put in place, by March 31, 2023, a system to properly quantify the overtime hours of the police so that members can be accurately compensated.

But the court sided with the Government by not granting damages to the police federation, pointing out that rank-and-file cops had accepted a 10-hour overtime payment from the Government, regardless of actual hours worked, until the new system was put in place. The court also ordered that the Government continue to pay the 10 hours of overtime until March 31, 2023, by which time the new system should be in place.

James said the parties had not complied in full with the orders of the court and that contempt proceedings were filed recently in the Supreme Court regarding non-compliance with the court orders in relation to the overtime matter.