NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe.
NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said his ministry is moving full steam ahead with its plans to increase manpower in the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Mr Munroe, during his contribution to the mid-year budget debate in Parliament, said when he assumed office in 2021, he found in place a deficit of some 900 officers. He said the former administration appeared to pay little attention to resourcing the police force.
However, he said, the Davis administration has been seeking to fill that gap.
“Recruitment during the last administration did not address the attrition rate for officers retiring, being dismissed from the force and dying,” he said.
“In every year since this minister has been in this seat and the current minister of finance has been in the seat, we have recruited more officers than we have lost. Every single year and so the $2.5m additional for salaries just continues what is happening currently.
“We even have to recruit 58 additional firefighters because we didn’t have sufficient fire branch officers. That was addressed immediately. We now have 120 in now and when they come out, another squad will go in.
“We understand the need to properly man the police and to use a phrase that they keep saying: we find these problems, we’re fixing them and this figure in the supplementary budget just shows how we are fixing that.”
Comments
hrysippus 1 year, 8 months ago
This is risible; Working from rounded figures; with 4,000 police officers for a population of 400,000, the country has one police officer per 100 citizens, In contrast the United Kingdom has one police officer per 866 citizens. This country has over 8 times as many per capita as the UK and apparently that is not enough. And we still have one of the highest murder rates of any country in the world. More policemen will make absolutely no difference in my opinion but let us hope that opinion is wrong. The RBPF is a large and inefficient top heavy bureaucracy, All bureaucrats have always sought more and yet more junior bureaucrats under their authority as it automatically gives them more seniority; I suspect this is at the root of the dramatic increase in costly manpower and womanpower.
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