Finance Minister defends Police personnel spending; comments center on insurance and overtime

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, October 12, 2022 – Finance Minister E. Jay Saunders is refuting claims that police officers do not have life insurance. He was speaking on Financially Speaking, hosted by Drexwell Seymour and aired Tuesdays on RTC; he was responding to claims by the Opposition PDM.

The People’s Democratic Movement party had, in an open letter, described the life insurance issue as one of several ‘key unaddressed areas’ in the recent supplementary budget. The PDM leader maintains there was no provision for insurance and no overtime for the police or enhanced health insurance coverage.

Deputy Premier Saunders refuted the idea that they were wholly without insurance.

“One time I was in a meeting and I brought up life insurance because the police had brought it up to me and I was assured that the Police have life insurance, they certainly have at the minimum an accidental death insurance, if anything happens to them so it’s not like they have zero insurance.” he said.

While admitting that more could possibly be done in terms of insurance, the Deputy Premier maintained that the Opposition leader was playing politics.

He also said the issue of overtime was more complicated than it seemed describing Edwin Astwood  as ‘being disingenuous.’

“What happened was that the Ministry of Finance approved an increase for position in the Police force even unfilled positions— And so it was articulated to them that they could use if they needed money for overtime they could move funding from the increase for the positions that were unfilled— So it’s not like the money isn’t there, it can be moved. The leader of the Opposition is being disingenuous and playing with words because he knows, he was a minister in government, he knows there’s enough funding under the Police to cover overtime.”

The Deputy Premier did not address the other items raised by the PDM which include a cancellation of construction of the classroom blocks slated for at least one public high school.