Retiring Assistant Commis-sioner of Police Paul Slowe said he was shocked and is still hurting over the dismissal of Superintendent Simon Mc Bean last year, an officer he described as young and intelligent with a lot to offer the force.
“A young bright officer who I saw a lot in, I use to encourage him to study, encourage him to pursue the career,” Slowe said of Mc Bean in a recent interview with this newspaper.
“I was shocked to discover that a young, bright, talented police officer in an organisation such as the police force that is crying out for qualified officers would seek to have the man dismissed.”
“I am hurting until now because of this,” Slowe said, disclosing that Mc Bean was very instrumental in preparing Guyana’s 2006 Cricket World Cup Security Plan and according to Slowe the officer ran the show during the staging of the matches in Guyana.
“I still can’t understand it, I still can’t understand it,” Slowe lamented.
Slowe said when Mc Bean got the British Chevening scholarship, he was instrumental in assisting him with the arrangements to travel to the United Kingdom.
“Now what is not said is that he had applied for leave to go and study, we discussed it at senior management [and] people were very upbeat because we are happy that an officer of the force had won a Chevening scholarship through a very competitive process,” he said.
Slowe said he was personally involved in following up the officer’s leave application at the level of the Ministry of Home Affairs and at some stage they got the impression that it was not going to be granted.
According to Slowe, he advised Mc Bean who was about to proceed on his annual vacation not to do so until his studies had commenced in case the study leave was not granted he could still journey to England on his leave and apply for no-pay leave.
“Then we applied for no-pay leave, we applied for his ninety-something days vacation leave and for no-pay leave. And when he left this country, you can check the record I challenge anybody to dispute the records…, the application for no-pay leave was in the system. So he had anticipated that either they would have granted him the leave with pay or as a last resort they would have granted him no-pay (leave),” Slowe told Stabroek News.
Slowe said, however, they never anticipated that the system would have denied a man who won a Chevening scholarship no-pay leave to go and study.
Initially, Slowe said, when the issue was raised Mc Bean was not denied the leave but the government requested a policy position on the issue as they did not want to deal with it “haphazardly.”
The retiring officer said that he was part of a team that put up a position paper and one of the things they recommended was that persons be allowed to study and if they are not granted study leave they should also be given the option to proceed on no-pay leave.
However, he said he recommended that the person must sign a contract to return to Guyana to serve the force or the country so that the system benefits.
“But I don’t know what happened to the policy paper, I know it went into the system because I was making sure the paper was written, I made sure it got to the relevant authority… I did all of that,” Slowe said.
He said even if Mc Bean had breached a regulation, dismissal is the ultimate sanction, “but there are several other things they could have done to ensure that the system retains the man’s knowledge and skills.”
Mc Bean received a dismissal letter last September over his unauthorized decision to proceed on ‘no-pay leave’ to pursue the scholarship.
He had told the media at a press conference that he was not given a hearing on the matter before the marching orders were given and he only learnt that disciplinary action was being taken against him after it was leaked to the press.
However, government later backed the decision by the force with head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon saying it was most reasonable and predictable.
“I feel strongly about the decision because a service official in the security sector cannot be so trivial with rules and regulations of the institution,” Luncheon had declared.
However, he had said that the next time entities are giving scholarships they should ensure that more consultation is done with the authorities. He called the whole incident reckless and a waste of time and resources.
Mc Bean at the press conference had told reporters that he was receiving his “full salary” during the disputed period and felt that the matter had been sorted out.
Mc Bean had secured a scholarship for a Master’s Degree in Global Security at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom between October 1, 2007 and September 30, 2008.
He was awarded the scholarship from a field of 250 persons who had applied and so he made a request to the Guyana Police Force for study leave to proceed on the scholarship and was disappointed that it was not granted.
Not wanting to throw away the opportunity, Mc Bean applied for ‘no-pay’ leave two months before leaving for the UK but there was no response. He said he was left with no choice but to proceed on his three-month accumulated annual leave.
After returning he resumed normal duties until he received the dismissal letter from the force. The letter stated that his service had been terminated as of December 25, 2007, the day after his three-month annual leave had ended.
