Home Affairs C.E.O. Says Caye Caulker Police Getting Help to Move Out of Crumbling Barracks

Last week, News Five reported on the inhospitable conditions that officers attached to the Caye Caulker Police Station are presently subjecting themselves to.  The housing facilities are the property of the village council and have been written off as decrepit and unlivable.  While the president of the Police Association has since expressed serious concerns to Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie, the truth of the matter, according to C.E.O. George Lovell, is that the men and women of law enforcement, specifically those working on the island, are receiving allowances for housing expenses.  Lovell acknowledges the deplorable state of the buildings but says that officers must also do their part in using the allowance for its intended purpose.

George Lovell

Ret. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Home Affairs

“Quite a really bad state they are in out there and it is a matter that we have been working on ever since we were under the Ministry of National Security.  I can tell you that every officer who is out there gets the requisite allowances for them to be able to go out and rent their own facility.  They get hardship allowance, they get housing allowance, all the allowances that are required of them.  It happens that the facility that is out in Caye Caulker is a facility that is owned by the village council and they have been kind enough to provide us or offer us the use and enjoyment of those facilities over the years.  Unfortunately, it has come to the point where the facility is in some dire need for repairs, which we had intended to do quite some time ago.  But obviously what the police officers need to do now is to go out and use those funding that was given to them to get the kind of accommodations that they need.  There are some challenges.  I, as the C.E.O. of National Security then, was prepared for us to demolish what is out there because the place needs to be demolished and for us to go and construct something else for them, the police officers were saying, well if you demolish it you now have to find somewhere to go and we have identified a hotel that you can put us in.  It doesn’t work like that.  Public Officers, which include police officers, are given allowances for them to go and find somewhere for themselves and I certainly as the C.E.O. am sympathetic as to what is going on.  I would try and meet them even beyond halfway because we’ve already met them the full way.  But I am prepared to go and even assist further in trying to get some sort of accommodations that they can in fact be housed adequately while they are out there.  But they have to try themselves to make it work for the task that they have been paid for and have been given requisite allowances that government allow.”