Letter: Look at Nizam's statement with clarity

This issue needs to be dealt with with some clarity, and with focus where focus belongs.

In the first place, I do not think that Nizam Mohammed said "there are too many Africans in the upper ranks of the Police Service", as some are reporting. He said there were not enough Indians, and there is a difference.

In order to understand the ratios that matter here, we need to know the "ethnic makeup"of the Police Service as a whole, and the ethnic makeup of applicants to the Police Service over the years.

Are applicants of Indian origin being denied entry to the Service, and ultimately, denied promotion once accepted? Or are Indians less interested in applying to the service and therefore their numbers there do not reflect the "national ethnic figures". Or are they being systematically denied entry and subsequently promotion?

It may be that we are at a current position where "Indians" are not represented as fully as the national data should suggest, and that might not have any sinister reason behind it.

It is also curious that the elected President of the Police Services Welfare Association, a Sergeant of Indian descent, elected by an "African" dominated Service, is now claiming that those who elected him to represent them will be unfair to him in a promotion interview.

I would like to suggest that our makeup of institutions like the Army, Police and Prisons Services, are far more affected by socio-economic and cultural forces than by racism. While I will accept that ethnicity (rather than racism, not race) may influence those socio-economic and cultural forces, all that is very different to denying anyone admission or promotion on the basis of "race".

We did, in the 1990's, have a CoP who was Indian, that being Commissioner Mohammed. Was any dissent by African officers recorded?

Stretching PSC Commissioner Nizam Mohammed's argument beyond the Police Service, we can easily claim that the Hardware Store business is discriminatory against "African" citizens. And if we rely solely on the "numbers", the same might apply to the legal and medical professions.

Be careful how we "count these numbers" Trinidad and Tobago! The answers may not reflect the reality of our society.

By all means, let us examine this issue, but from the bottom up, not from the top down. 

Peter O'Connor