BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 11th September 2020)-“We had a report just last week, someone made a report on a particular business that when they went to the business someone was at the door hand sanitizing the persons as they enter but when they smelled their hand, they realized it didn’t have any scent; they realized that it was water …plain water.”
“So said Superintendent Cromwell Henry during an appearance on the weekly ‘Policing With You’ radio programme aired on ZIZ on Thursday 10th September 2020 in addressing the importance of a compliance task force as he spoke about a new group of individuals currently being trained in becoming full time workers on such a team amidst COVID-19.
On the hand sanitizing report made, he further told: “The police went and verified it that it was water that person at the door was spraying in people’s hand as sanitizing and so these are the things that are happening out there and so the compliance team would be responsible to ensure that these practices do not continue and that persons would use the recommended sanitizer; it must be 70 per cent alcohol and so that will be part of their remit.”
Superintendent Henry informed that about thirty (30) persons are currently in a two-week training at the Police Training Complex covering aspects of the Emergency Powers Regulations and other training to complement their function such as customer service, report writing and observation.
“It would not be the same task force but they would have the same objective. In the past that first task force was put in place, it was comprised of civil servants from various departments so we had persons from immigration, persons from police, persons from the Ministry of Health, persons from fire so a cross section of the public service and so they had their regular jobs to do. It was ok because we were in the lockdown period and so their workplace would have been closed or reduced operations and so it was easy for them to be seconded to this task force to function full time.”
He continued: “Now that things are fairly normal in terms of work operations, they have to go back to their various jobs and so they were not able to operate as a compliance team so what the government is doing now is to hire a set of people specifically to provide that particular service so that would be the compliance team and would be there full time job; they will have no other job to go back to.”
Commenting on their role, the top cop highlighted: “Their main in responsibility would be to inspect business and other enterprises to ensure that they are complying with the regulations to assist businesses in becoming compliant, making recommendations and reporting on those persons who were compliant and are no longer compliant and work with them to get them maintain their compliance with the regulations so it’s basically assist business in becoming compliant and maintaining their compliance and to enforce the compliance.”
Superintendent Henry talked about the role of the task force in quarantine measures.
“In addition to compliance with the regulations there will be a role for them in quarantine because quarantine is one of the regulations going forward- even now- and so they would also assist in enforcing the quarantine. We have heard of persons in quarantine who may have to wear bracelets or other tracking devices to ensure that you remain where you say you are. Those persons who are wearing those tracking devices would to be monitored so that will be part of their function to monitor person who are in quarantine, to visit quarantine sites, to assist in the preapproval requests of quarantine sites so their role will be wide not only in compliance but to assist in preparation of the quarantine sites, enforcing quarantine and monitoring persons who are in quarantine.”
As it relates to monitoring business places by the compliance task force, he shared: “All business would be checked because we know some businesses would have lapsed because there is no one checking on them. The markers that they would have had on their premises they would have worn over time and they did not bother to replace them. The hand sanitizing that they would have had at the door, the lining up, some persons would have just finished away with that.”