Police ranks are now faced with a conundrum now that the Guyana Police Force has released its long awaited promotions list.
The list was released to the media on Tuesday via the Force’s Corporate Communications Unit, its public relations armed.
Following the release of the list several ranks complained about the inaccuracies including the misspelling of names and instances where their regulation numbers were not correct.
When this publication reached out to the Communications Unit, Public Relations Officer Stan Gouveia directed that ranks reach out to their division commanders.
When it was pointed out that the regulation numbers remain incorrect, Gouveia responded by saying.
“if a regulation number does not belong to someone then it belongs to another. That is the promoted rank.”
In other words, what Stan is indirectly saying is that ranks should overlook the mixup of their names against the incorrect regulation numbers or their regulation numbers against the incorrect spelling of names and just pretend that the promotion announced against their names actually belongs to someone else.
Several ranks told us that the promotions list is not merely an announcement but is used to guide future actions and had hoped that all mistakes would be correctly promptly.
They explained that they already felt demoralized by the tardy release of the list. Up to the time, we published this article, there has been no proper word from the police force or its corporate communications unit that can put the mind of ranks at ease with respect to the ‘messed-up’ list.
This is not the first time that the Police’s PR arm as well as senior officers have dismissed media queries on important and urgent issues that affect the moral of members of the force.