Letter to police commission

Iimplore the Malawi Police Service Commission to start treating its employees equally and urgently put its house in order to become a motivating employer.

The police service has a crop of arrogant and selfish senior officers who promote nepotism and inconsiderate actions against their fellow officers.

Mainly, I am concerned with the way senior officers are treating some graduates in its ranks who went to court to seek justice after being neglected by the commission for many years.

I humbly plead with the commission headed by a judge to ensure that the case is heard soon to clear sticky issues surrounding the case.

For years, there has been an unheeded cry from officers who obtained degrees while working with the police service.

Their lamentations have taken long to attract fair answers and actions from the arrogant system.

It appears the service has bosses who do not care about junior officers as long as their personal interests are being met.

Look, we, the concerned graduates in the police service were hurt during the 2017 structural and functional reforms.

Before the reforms, there was no problem as graduates were pegged in grade I, an equivalent to the rank of superintendent.

This means that they were receiving higher salaries than assistant superintendents and inspectors regardless of their ranks.

When the reforms happened, every police officer moved two grades upwards.

Surprisingly, the police graduates in grade I were discriminated and all inspectors who were two grades below caught up with them.

Even assistant superintendents who were one grade below these graduates leapfrogged them by a grade.

Ironically, all superintendents, who were then on same grade with the concerned graduates, moved two grades up.

What must be noted is that the functional review affected grades of all officers under the then Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security, now called Ministry of Homeland Security, where the Immigration Department and Malawi Prison Service belong.

Our colleagues in the two sister institutions also benefitted from the reforms, meaning the cake was meant for every officer in the ministry and no officer had to be injured by the shift.

However, the police chose to do things differently by excluding disgruntled graduates.

Now, we hear that there are looming promotions for senior officers, yet there are outstanding issues to be addressed before the grades are reviewed.

In the service, we have several graduates who presented their papers as early as 2017, but their grades have not changed.

The common response from our seniors is that there are no vacancies in the police service.

Where have the vacancies to be filled this year come from? Where does it get the vacancies filled by graduates it recruits every year while those who upgraded on the job are stuck to low grades?

We only hope that the police commission will do the needful to correct the discriminatory decisions and uphold the dignity of the police service.

We are tired of being victimised by some selfish officers at Area 30 Headquarters to satisfy their nepotistic interests.

Think about the graduates battling against the unfair outcome of the functional review that came short of principles of equal treatment.

I wonder why the commission allowed the police service to implement the reforms in a discriminatory matter knowing that the decision would only affect grades, not ranks, as some learned police lawyers at Area 30 argue.

In the name of fair treatment and nondiscrimination, we need a police service that functions professionally and with integrity.

This starts with the people at the helm handle concerns of junior officers.

So, it is high time the police commission acted decisively to correct the anomaly created by the 2017 promotions.