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RVIPF gets £1.2M from UK
This disclosure was made by Commissioner of Police Mr Michael B. Matthews at a press conference in Pasea Estate this morning, January 29, 2018.
According to Commissioner Matthews, £1.2M, or $1.69M according to current currency exchange rates, was made available to the RVIPF in late December 2017 and that the funds have to be spent by March 31, 2018.
The top cop said the RVIPF realised there was going to be a “huge volume of repairs and replacements required needed across the whole of the public service” and the RVIPF had to see where else assistance could be obtained.
“The UK recognised that as the case as well and offered their support and assistance to the security of the Territory and to make sure that we could quickly restore some of the capacity and capabilities we lost during the storm.”
How will the money be spent?
According to Mr Matthews, some of the monies will be used to bring 6 officers from the United Kingdom to investigate murders. Four of those investigators, he added, are already here.
“We are trying to spend it as quickly as possible… I haven’t exactly got the figures, but what we have done is that we have got firearms trainers on the ground at the moment, we have extra detectives on the ground at the moment, we have had at least two vehicles ordered and we have had materials ordered for some of our worst damaged buildings. There is a fair bit of that money being spent as we sit here now.”
The funds, according to Commissioner Matthews, was made availabe to the RVIPF from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) through the Governor's Office.
Where is the $890, 000 given by previous Governor?
It was on March 16, 2017 that previous Governor Mr John S. Duncan OBE ordered that over $1.88M of public monies be taken from the Consolidated Fund and decided that the Police, Magistrate’s Court, Attorney General’s Chambers and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions be granted these funds.
$890,000 of the $1.88M was given to the RVIPF.
In an exclusive interview with Governor Duncan on June 22, 2017 he had said the effects of the extra funding to the Police and other departments would take time to bear fruits.
“...and as one of the bloggers said, ‘it takes time’. It’s not just, oh give me the money and everything happens, of course not, we have to address the underspending in the past four years, so that takes time to put it back together again.
It was known that the Police have brought in no less than six detectives from the United Kingdom, using the resources made available to them from the Consolidated Fund, a story first reported by this news site.
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