Meritocracy must be based on consistent performance

THE EDITOR: Thank you for your series of timely editorials on a range of national issues. In your editorial (Aug 23 p 10) you assessed the feasibility of the merit-based system of promotion over the current system that may be based exclusively on seniority (years of experience) in the Police Service. Meritocracy must serve as a comprehensive performance based management tool that must apply throughout the Service in all aspects of police work. It should not be necessarily applied and restricted to those policemen “who go beyond the call of duty” and as you correctly postulated, cannot be divorced from seniority.

In fact the job specifications of the respective ranks in the Police Service must be comprehensively and holistically detailed and leave no room for doubt or subjectivity. The job specification must lend itself to an objective assessment of the objectively stated performance targets expected of the officers concerned. The planned introduction of a Police promotion system based on meritocracy and performance must be premised on a mutually determined performance management system and evaluation (what the editorial describes as “firm guidelines”) in which predetermined work-related policing skills and abilities and performance standards must be objectively and rigidly assessed at predetermined and regular intervals. Thanks to the late management guru, Gordon Draper, this system was introduced in the general Public Service in the mid-90s.

Meritocracy must be determined from cumulative assessment records of the requisite consistency as demonstrated by the officers concerned in achieving the agreed performance targets. Subjectivity in performance evaluation must be reduced to the unavoidable minimum to prevent nepotism and favouritism and the development of a cabal within the Service. Like beauty, meritocracy cannot reside in the eyes of the assessing police officer.  For a Service that is under intense public scrutiny, it has failed us in its mission to protect and serve. It is accordingly the subject of widespread public discontent, lack of confidence and a growing perception of insider corruption and collusion with criminals.

A reform of the prevailing system of upward mobility within the Police Service is contingent on objectively assessed, target-driven, performance-related criteria that are both necessary and urgent to contribute to the restitution of public confidence. Meritocracy cannot be completely divorced from seniority or experience. Nor can it be exclusively qualifications-based. I wish to suggest that a genuine, transparent and accountable performance based system of promotion can mobilise the high levels of motivation across the Service that is the subject of your second instructive editorial on qualitative-driven reform of the Police Service (Aug 26, p10).

However, in spite of all the best reform intentions and the introduction of the most tried and tested management techniques, the current subjectively based procedures (nepotism) and selection criteria that result in almost 80 percent of the members of the Service, if not from the entire Protective Services, being recruited from County St George are both flawed and discriminatory. As a consequence the preponderance in the Service of Afro-Trinbagonians does not enhance what our Chief Justice Sharma calls the critical “pro-active component” or intelligence gathering. The appointment of a Deputy CoP with responsibility for intelligence gathering is a case of jobs for the boys. For the Service to fulfil its demanding mission to protect and serve, a radically reforming and egalitarian-based recruitment system must be implemented to attract a multi-ethnic contingent of recruits drawn from the widest geographical catchment area.

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni