THE Police Complaints Authority (PCA) said it has avenues to seek additional funding if needed.
The authority made this comment one day after its director, David West, told a parliamentary joint select committee that the PCA will need additional funding to deal with increasing complaints against police officers.
West raised this matter before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday.
In a statement issued on Thursday in response to questions from Newsday, the PCA said, "There is always the avenue to request additional funding if necessary at the mid-year review with the relevant justifications."
The authority added, "Barring that, additional funding can be requested for the next budget."
The PAC meeting examined the PCA's 2015-2021 financial statements.
Newsday was reliably informed that the authority's requests for additional funding during that period were granted.
The PCA has already received its allocations for the current financial year.
According to the Draft Estimates of Recurrent Expenditure 2024, the PCA's allocation for 2024 is $18,650,000.
The allocations for 2022 and 2023 were $17,000,000 and $18,500,000, respectively.
On Wednesday at the meeting, Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs (AGLA) acting deputy permanent secretary Cher Augustine-Hamilton said the PCA received total funding of $128,160,340 from the AGLA for the 2015-2021 period.
She added, "The PCA's funding consists of monies appropriated to it by Parliament. Its accounts are audited annually by the Auditor General or an auditor authorised by him for such purpose."
The AGLA, Augustine-Hamilton, continued, "is responsible for disbursing monthly subventions to the PCA to efficiently carry out its functions."
Asst Auditor General Gary Peters, who also attended the meeting, said the PCA's audits for 2015 and 2016 were done by a private auditor.
The 2017-2021 audits were done by the Auditor General.
Peters described the PCA as one of the entities under the Auditor General's purview, which is very efficient in auditing its financial statements.
"The PCA is usually receptive to all our recommendations during and at the end of the audit and we are quite happy for that."
In describing the authority’s management of its available finances as efficient, West said, “We have. I would say a small war chest.”
This "war chest" was estimated to be approximately $4.4 million.
On Wednesday, West also said the number of complaints against police officers for this year was 713.
West said that in 2014-2015 when he began his tenure as PCA director, the authority had 352 complaints against police officers.
He said, “By 2021-2022, that had increased to 569 complaints.”
West told PAC members that from 2014-2022, 354 and 93 complaints were sent to the Commissioner of Police (CoP) and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for action.
In its 2021-2022 annual report, the PCA said 410 investigations into complaints against police officers were closed during this period.
In 2021-2022, the author
