Grenada’s Deputy Commissioner of Police Michael Francois says the Royal Grenada Police Force (RGPF) has called on officers who are currently on annual leave to report for duty at their respective duty stations.
The call was made following an increase in infections of COVID-19 among police officers.
On August 30, Commissioner of Police Edvin Martin disclosed that 18 officers were COVID-19 positive but during a news conference on Saturday, Francois announced that the numbers had significantly increased.
“I can confirm to you now, that there are 82 positive cases within the Royal Grenada Police Force. Yes, this is significantly affected the operations of the RGPF,” he said while disclosing that officers on vacation or annual leave were asked to return to active duty.
“As of today, we have instructed all our police officers who are on annual leave to report to their duty stations in order to augment all of the remaining staff to ensure we can cover all of our operations requirements as we go through this period” said Francois.
Tighter restrictions
“The Royal Grenada Police Force is stretched at this time with respect to all that is expected to be provided for the enforcement of these regulations,” said Francois, who was speaking in a news conference that provided the public with rules and regulations of the tighter restrictions as announced by Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell during a national address on Friday night.
“We are still expected to carry out our normal law enforcement functions of fire, immigrations, coast guard, and all the other functions that we are expected to perform,” he said.
“And at the same time, many of our officers, because they belong to the community just as all of our citizens, they will come down with certain diseases as well,” Francois said while stating that more officers will become infected.
“Yes, we are affected, and we will be affected as other police officers are infected,” he said.
As of September 4, the Ministry of Health declared that the island is affected by the community spread of the virus.
There are 994 active local cases of COVID-19 and 10 imported cases.
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