Damion Mitchell, News Coordinator - Radio

NSWMA boss Joan Gordon-Webley ... the names of the policemen have since been removed from the agency's payroll. - File

The Police Commissioner, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, has ordered a review of the policy that governs the employment of off-duty police personnel.

Karl Angell, director of communications at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, says the commissioner has directed that the policy review for the police extra-work programme be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

The announcement follows reports that several policemen, including an assistant commissioner of police, were on the payroll of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).

Police prohibited

The Constabulary Force Act prohibits police personnel from engaging in public employment without the approval of the governor general through the national security minister.

According to the executive director of the NSWMA, Joan Gordon-Webley, the names of the policemen have since been removed from the agency's payroll.

She said the policemen were being paid for providing security, but there was no documentation indicating the specifics of their services.

Furthermore, Gordon-Webley said she was concerned that agents of the state, like the police, were being paid by the NSWMA to provide security. "We can't pay directly to police officers," said Gordon-Webley, who is also the defeated former Jamaica Labour Party caretaker for the South East St Andrew constituency.

"I saw some things that I did not like in the last election and I decided to look back at the NSWMA payroll and certain names of police officers came up," she told The Gleaner/ Power 106 News Centre.

The NSWMA head said the decision to remove the names of the policemen from the authority's payroll is among several other efforts to clean up the irregularities there.

According to her, the restructuring of the NSWMA should save the agency about $57 million a year.

Earlier this year the general secretary of the Jamaica Police Federation, Corporal Hartley Stewart, told The Gleaner that there was a clear need for a review of the police extra-work programme. "We want a policy to ensure that nobody goes beyond certain bounds," he said.

He pointed to existing regulation, which suggests that police personnel can hold a job or own a business with the approval of the Police Services Commission, but he said this is not enough.

"There is a loose regulatory framework, a loose regulatory ambit over it," he said.

According to Corporal Stewart, in 1994 the Police Federation and the government agreed to establish an extra work programme to govern off-duty employment, but that has been delayed.

Freelance reporter, Mark Titus contributed to this story.