ROBBERY

GIVEN 138 words to spell in an examination, the only word a would-be policeman could spell in a dictation exercise was “Robbery.”

“He got that word perfect,” was how Dennis Graham, acting Assistant Commissioner of Police (South), described the high failure rate of the applicants who wrote the examination last Saturday for entry in the Special Reserve Police (SRP). A total of close to 13,000 sat the examination throughout the country.  One applicant was found in possession of a fraudulent passport. According to Graham, words such as “penalties,” “chaos” and “society” gave applicants lots of trouble.  He said some of the applicants gave several excuses for their performances. Some of them included having to stand in the sun for their names to be called into the exam room, or that they were unable to properly hear the PA system which was used in all nine police Divisions for the exam. However, another senior officer said the excuses were poor, and that it was made even worse since all the would-be SRP entrants were allowed ten mistakes.  “It was a very simple passage.  It is a sad thing,” he said. Head of the North Eastern Division, acting Sr Supt Waldron Bishop said: “They just can’t spell, and the passage was not read too fast.” Bishop said the passage dealt with the functions of the Government, and some of the biggest words were “fundamental” and “confusion”, with the smallest words being “and”, “one” and “for.”

Graham said of the near 4,000 applicants who wrote the exams in the Southern Division, only 615 passed, while in the South Western Division, 343 passed with 529 failing. Poor results were also recorded in the other seven Divisions. The Port-of-Spain, Western, North Eastern and Northern Divisions recorded 50 percent failures, while the Eastern Division said they had 55 percent failures and the Central Division reported several mistakes, but they were tallying the results up to late evening. The situation was similar in Tobago, according to Supt Benjamin Watson.  He said the Tobago Division had a 45.1 percent pass rate, with 54.9 percent of the applicants failing. “Normally Tobagonians do well.  The females outshone the males. The males were not good and need to buck up on themselves,” Watson said. Another senior officer in the North Eastern Division said there were instances where the applicants could not spell a word, and instead they drew objects.  In the Port-of-Spain Division there were reports of applicants writing “two lines” and giving up because they could not cope.

One of the persons who passed the dictation exam in the Port-of-Spain Division is an 85-year-old retired police officer.  “He passed with flying colours,” a police source said.  Asked about the age of this individual, the source said the application was open to everyone. There were other concerns expressed with some of the applicants being accused of duplicating forms in different divisions. The 12,866 who wrote the dictation exam was reduced from the 17,000 odd who responded to newspaper advertisements for last Saturday’s exams.   The others just did not turn up, senior officers said.  Another exam is to be held and 1,000 SRPs will be chosen. Meantime all who wrote last Saturday’s dictation examination, are asked to return today at 8 am to the venues where they sat the exam. The nine venues are Barataria Junior Secondary School, Arima Senior Comprehensive, Woodbrook Government Secondary, Chaguanas Senior Comprehensive, Bishop’s High School (Tobago), Pleasantville Junior Secondary, Diego Martin Junior Secondary, Siparia Junior Secondary and the North Eastern College.