Retired Snr Supt feels cheated by Police Service Commission

Feb 14, 2016 News

With the long-awaited police senior ranks promotions set to be released soon, not many will be happy. For a

Snr. Supt. Rtd. Courtney Ramsey

former senior officer, the recent position taken by the Police Service Commission on the question of supersession has come a bit too late.
Retired Senior Superintendent of Police, Courtney Ramsey, believes that the belated position taken by the PSC is painful for him since he narrowly missed out on its implementation.
Ramsey who retired last year believes that he was overlooked for promotion, claiming that he was superseded by his juniors, through no fault of his or the Force administration. He blamed collusion of the PSC and the political directorate at the time.
Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Omesh Satyanand, in a previous interview, said that the Commission is moving to end supersession in the Guyana Police Force unless it is justified.
“You need to justify why you’re promoting someone over someone else who is in the same rank for a longer period. That is something that we thought we should examine carefully,” Satyanand had said.
But for Ramsey this is a bit too late. Ramsey claimed that at the time of the last police promotion, he was the most senior of the force’s Senior Superintendents and had no pending disciplinary matters, yet he was superseded by those who were his junior.
“I’m still wondering if he could explain the reason why myself and others who were recommended by the Commissioner then, were not promoted…and the three most junior of the senior superintendents were promoted to Assistant Commissioners,” Ramsey told this newspaper.
He was referring to Senior Superintendents like Nigel Hoppie and Dale Alves who were bypassed last year in favour of Clifton Hicken and Marlon Chapman, who Ramsey said were not recommended by the force administration.
Incidentally, this newspaper has learnt that the PSC has corrected this situation and has approved the promotion of both Hoppie and Alves along with that of the force’s training officer Paul Williams, to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police.
According to Ramsey, he is bitter because while those promoted this year had a second chance for the PSC to rightfully elevate them, he had none, having retired last November as a Senior Superintendent, which means a smaller gratuity and pension.
“I want to know why the Commission did not address these issues in the 2015 promotions…If they were addressed then, I am certain that I would not have been left out,” Ramsey stated.
He is adamant that he had satisfied the criteria for promotion and feels that his “victimization” came from outside forces and not from within the Force Administration.
“If I was promoted in 2015, I would not have been affecting anybody because I would have retired in November and there would have been a vacancy for someone else to be promoted this year. That is how it used to be done years ago,” he explained, adding that in years gone by promotion looked at seniority as a priority.
Ramsey noted that he was functioning in an Assistant Commissioner position as a Divisional Commander since 2012 and he saw no reason why he could not have been made substantive three years later when he was due to retire, since the vacancy already existed.
At the time of the promotions last year there were vacancies for eight Assistant Commissioners of Police but strangely enough the Commission only appointed three, excluding Ramsey, Hoppie and Alves in the process.
Ramsey could have challenged it but he did not.
“You know there was a rumour that some promotions would have come out for independence last year and I thought that my position would have been corrected. But that wasn’t to be…Now the (PSC) Chairman is talking about vacancies. There were vacancies in 2015,” Ramsey stated.
This year all the vacancies for Assistant Commissioners have been filled, but this will be short-lived since the force is staring at the imminent retirement of two senior officers–Assistant Commissioners Balram Persaud and Winston Cosbert- in the not too distant future.
“Why is supersession an issue now and it wasn’t an issue in 2015? Is it because of a change of administration that this Chairman wants to let the administration feel he is transparent?” Ramsey questioned.
“I feel that the entire Public Service Commission was completely manipulated by political forces,” he added.