Police budget cuts were in ‘not too critical areas’?

Allen whylie

In the Prime Minister’s budget for this financial year, numerous programs were served on the chopping block to balance the budget.  The operation of one ministry which is considered critical to the well being of all citizens and visitors received a serious blow to what PUP deputy leader Mark Espat referred to as taking blood away from a patient on the operating table.  Well, Allen Whylie, the C.E.O. in the Ministry of National Security, revealed that when it was time to make cuts, the ministry did it in areas that were not too critical. But in the age of AK-forty-sevens ,M-sixteen and M-four carbine rifles on the street, coupled with grenade attacks and an appalling murder conviction rate, one can only wonder what  areas were not too critical.

Allen Whylie, CEO, Ministry of National Security

“The police Budget I believe went down by about a million dollars but for the previous years there have always been increases. I think last year forty-four million dollars or something was budget or forty-one million dollars the police spent about three or four million dollars less than what had been budgeted for. So even though there has been a reduction in this year’s budget it is still above what had actually been spent last year. So it should not necessarily affect operationally too much. There might be some areas like infrastructure where expansion may be needed where it might affect but operationally, administratively it should not. What the ministry has been directing the commissioner to do from early when we were in the budget process was to identify his areas of priority because we knew cuts would have been made. So we concentrated our efforts across the ministry in the areas that were not too, we view as too critical.”

Whylie said the ministry was expecting equipment which would aid in developing ballistics testing on ammunition.  This would come through the Merida Initiative, now named the Central American Regional Security Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. government.