Police officers at LNG sites complain about allowance

By JACOB POK
Police personnel, deployed to provide securities in various LNG site operations in Southern Highlands and Central have claimed that they were not paid their allowances for two months.
According to a policeman, who wished to remain in anonymity, claimed that most of the police officers engaged in police special division (SSD) which included mobile squad and body guards had not been paid their allowances.
The officer also claimed that the allowance rates of SSD officers was not fair as those SSD officers in Papa and Lealea LNG sites in central were paid K45 per day while those in Southern Highlands were paid K100.
He said it was unfair as all SSD officers carry out the same task to provide security to the project sites.
The officer blamed the police department for delaying the payment and also called on the acting police commissioner Tony Wagambie to increase the allowances of SSD officers in central to K100.
However, Wagambie clarified yesterday that all issues relating to SSD operations should be referred to the office of the SSD director, David Manning who would be in a better position to attend to the quires.
He said the SSD officers must not blamed the police department as the allowances were not paid by the police department but by ExxonMobil.
“The simple and proper procedure is for the officers to submit their list of names to the SSD director, who will then recommend the list to ExxonMobil to make the payments of the allowances,” Wagambie said.
He said SSD officers querying over allowances should know that the police department was a big department and various administrative tasks were delegated to senior officers to manage, adding that the SSD director was the person to attend to the case.
He said SSD officers should follow the correct channel by identifying their directors and get the issues solved rather than blaming the department.
He said there were two sets of outstanding allowances claims by SSD officers in Southern Highlands and the request for increase in allowances by those in Central were to be addressed by the mandated office of the SSD director.