MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young chal­lenged Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment last night over a pro­posed in­crease in po­lice over­time spend­ing, ques­tion­ing whether the fig­ure was jus­ti­fied and how it com­pared to salary costs.

Young fo­cused on Head 64, Sub­head 01, Per­son­al Ex­pen­di­ture, Item 001, in par­tic­u­lar Sub-item 03 cov­er­ing over­time, which showed a re­quest­ed vari­a­tion of an ad­di­tion­al $100 mil­lion. He asked whether the over­time al­lo­ca­tion, de­scribed in the es­ti­mates as pay­ments of al­lowances and over­time to month­ly paid po­lice of­fi­cers, was linked to in­creased call-out time dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

“Mem­ber, the an­swer is no,” Alexan­der replied when asked if the in­crease was tied to the SoE.