GRAFT and nepotism are the order of the day in the police force, a DISY deputy charged yesterday, citing examples of gross irregularities in promotion procedures.
Ionas Nicolaou, who is also DISY’s commissioner for Justice and Public Order affairs, called a news conference to unveil what he claims is the extent of favouritism in the police force.
He backed up his criticism with specific complaints from policemen and constables claiming to have been passed over for promotion despite being qualified.
A body known as the Merit Board has the final say regarding advancement in the force; but it acts on the recommendations of an evaluation committee, which processes the paperwork and handles all the details.
Nicolaou yesterday levelled fierce criticism at the committee, which he accused of blatantly breaching proper procedure and regulations, only recently voted in by parliament.
But police headquarters yesterday released a statement portraying DISY deputy Nicolaou as uninformed and saying he was jumping to conclusions.
Candidates for promotion were rated on many qualifications, including leadership skills, discipline and IQ, the statement from headquarters said. Some of these aspects are not easily quantifiable, hence there was always a margin of error involved.
The statement ended by giving assurances that no candidate would either be favoured or cheated.
Nicolaou cited examples indicating that candidates for promotion were not judged according to merit. In one case, the evaluation committee did not give a policeman the merit points he deserved for having a university degree and “sound knowledge of a foreign language”.
And another officer, who in the past received the female policeman of the year award, did not have this distinction recognised.
Moreover, on several occasions the appraisals of candidates’ superiors were completely ignored by the evaluation committee.
The DISY deputy said these were only a handful among scores of people complaining they were sidelined because they lacked “connections” or because they were affiliated to the “wrong party”.
“The force is fast becoming the domain of the party commissar types,” Nicolaou remarked, adding that a full-blown campaign was under way by some quarters to shape the police as they wanted it. Current practices in the police force were reminiscent of the 1980s, the DISY deputy added.
Nicolaou conceded that the law might be imperfect and contain loopholes, but he differentiated between that and outright disregard for procedure, which he said was the case here.
Meanwhile press reports suggested yesterday that the government was considering scrapping the entire promotions process and reinitiating it. The reason was that an extraordinarily high number (almost half) of candidates had filed a complaint about the processing of their application.
The Merit Board was currently examining around 200 applications where the candidates’ complaints were found to be justified.
A senior police officer attributed the anomaly to poor processing and/or insufficient information put on application forms.
According to protocol, the chief of police presents the final list of candidates for promotion to the justice minister for ratification. If the minister does not approve the list, the entire procedure must be repeated from scratch.
Soteris Charalambous, the police’s head of operations, has reportedly spoken in favour of cancelling the process.
