Forces government to seek recruits overseas
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WITH the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of the government having to revert to recruiting young men and women from overseas to join the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force, it is said that locals are refusing to take up the challenge of a career in national security.
At a recent press conference, SKNVibes asked Commissioner of Police Ian Queeley what is the rationale for overseas recruitment when there are many young people graduating from the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College and a number of local high schools, to which he declared they are just not joining the Force.
“We have been and continue to advertise, be it Facebook, Career Fairs, whatever. We have been advertising and persons who are here are just not coming forward, they are not coming forward,” Queeley said.
He continued: “And so we need resources. Many of us would appreciate the difference we see calling out the Defence Force to have additional resources, and we would want to have those resources. The thing about it is a lot of people, in my view, who do not understand demographics and so on, would make the comparison as to the number of the Police Force and the population and so on. But when we look at it, in many other islands, the United States or whatever, there are other supporting agencies.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Hilroy Brandy stated that they have been advertised throughout the region for the best and the brightest to join their ranks, noting that they had recently visited one of the islands to acquire recruits.
“As I mentioned earlier, we had a shortage of officers in the organization and we went locally and regionally to do advertisement. As a result, we recently visited St. Vincent – did some interviews, do ID tech, do polygraph - and yesterday was the results. Thirty persons came to St. Kitts and we are continuing the process, medical, to see how many of those 30 can be sworn-in to be officers of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force.”
Though those individuals are on island, the Police Force has not stopped its recruitment drive, according to Brandy.
“Presently, we are still doing advertisement in trying to attract the best and the brightest to our organization.”
CoP Queeley noted that they are not discriminating in any way in their recruitment of officers, as they are seeking to attract persons from across all sectors of the spectrum, from Forensic Accountants to those with IT qualifications.
“We want to indicate that we would not want to discriminate in our recruitment. But, we will seek to attract the brightest and best candidates for the job, giving the changing world. The applicants or candidates that are selected are reflective of the needs of the organization going forward.”
He added: “And that is why I spoke to the fact that we are seeking persons with technical competences, especially in the area of Forensics, in the area of Cybercrimes Investigation and so on. Persons who have those technical competencies, they are the persons who could be of great interest. We want to stress that we would like to attract persons with Accounting background; for example, Forensic Accountants…”
The Police Force is currently partnering with the Defence Force to stem the flow of crime in the Federation.
