Junior police officers spared pay reduction after outcry

Thousands of junior police officers whose salaries were drastically reduced last month have got a relief after new payslips showed the cut has been rescinded.

Officers who logged into the human resources online portal received April payslips showing they would get higher salaries at end of the month.

Those affected by the pay cuts are officers who had acquired university degrees and were rewarded with higher salaries and others who were exempted from paying taxes because they were disabled.

A number of officers said they obtained their pay details from the Government Human Resource Information System, a service that is accessible to public employees using unique passwords.

An audit by the National Police Service Commission, which revealed some graduate police officers colluded with crooked seniors to get higher pay, led to the decision to reduce the pay.

The officers took advantage of a gap in their employment terms that allowed graduates to earn higher salaries than colleagues with lower academic qualifications.

This triggered a rush as officers, who joined the service on the strength of a secondary school certificate, sought university degrees to benefit from higher graduate salaries.