RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

More women are join­ing the ranks of the T&T Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMS) says Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein.

He was speak­ing at the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day cel­e­bra­tions held in Mara­bel­la yes­ter­day.

More than 6,000 peo­ple have ap­plied to join the TTMS, Ho­sein said, since Cab­i­net ap­proved a pro­pos­al to in­crease the com­ple­ment of of­fi­cers to 100 of­fi­cers across each Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion and 200 in Port-of-Spain.

“From these ap­pli­ca­tions, we have seen a re­cur­ring fac­tor where­by a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater num­ber of fe­males were ap­ply­ing to join the ser­vice as op­posed to males. In fact, the cur­rent batch of trainees, Batch 2 of 2019, com­pris­es of 115 trainees of which 89 are fe­males. So you see, this is a clear in­di­ca­tion that more and more women are dri­ven to be­come po­lice of­fi­cers; ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing and serv­ing all,” he added.

Ho­sein said the women of­fi­cers are al­ways well-man­nered and neat­ly at­tired.

“Their con­tri­bu­tions to mat­ters af­fect­ing their com­mu­ni­ties are al­ways brought across with great com­pas­sion and they are known for go­ing above and be­yond the call of du­ty even dur­ing flood­ing, earth­quakes and oth­er dis­as­ters,” he said.

He not­ed that their “pro­tec­tive in­stinct adds an ex­tra touch of hu­mil­i­ty that the Ser­vice re­quires on a day-to-day ba­sis.”

Say­ing the TTMS re­quired a lot of dis­ci­pline, strength, hard work and dili­gence, Ho­sein said gen­der equal­i­ty and em­pow­er­ment of women should be high on the agen­da.

“Our gov­ern­ment through the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy con­tin­ues to de­vel­op and ex­e­cute projects and pro­grammes to en­sure equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty and the re­duc­tion of gen­der-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices. I am proud to be part of such ini­tia­tive that em­pow­ers our women to be strong and in­de­pen­dent,” he added.

Dur­ing the func­tion, awards were pre­sent­ed to re­tired of­fi­cers of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice.