Yvonne Webb

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is ap­peal­ing to protest­ing pris­ons of­fi­cers to be more re­spon­si­ble. He has al­so warned them against em­bar­rass­ing the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the up­com­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM). Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a walk­a­bout in his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy on Wednes­day, Man­ning said the of­fi­cers had le­git­i­mate con­cerns. He as­sured that those con­cerns would be ad­dressed. But Man­ning said: "Stay­ing away from prison (work) does no­body any good. They (the of­fi­cers) have a le­git­i­mate con­cern and it will be ad­dressed, but peo­ple have to be more re­spon­si­ble in the way they con­duct their le­git­i­mate busi­ness af­ter all. "What they try­ing to do...em­bar­rass the Gov­ern­ment? The Gov­ern­ment will not al­low that to hap­pen. That won't hap­pen."

The pris­ons of­fi­cers claimed they were un­der at­tack and have asked for guns to pro­tect them­selves af­ter two of their col­leagues were shot by crim­i­nals. An­tho­ny Sinanan was shot and wound­ed on No­vem­ber 4 at the car park of the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard Prison, Arou­ca, while Ian See­gob­in was shot dead three days lat­er. On Mon­day and Tues­day, pris­ons of­fi­cers at the Port-of-Spain State Prison staged a sick­out in protest of the shoot­ing of their col­leagues. The ac­tion of the of­fi­cers de­layed pro­ceed­ings in the mag­is­trates and high courts through­out the coun­try, as pris­on­ers were not brought to court on time. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Don­na Cox said on Wednes­day that the is­sue of giv­ing prison of­fi­cers guns was be­ing con­sid­ered.

As­so­ci­a­tion re­sponds

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Bur­ton Hill said peo­ple were un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the dan­gers pris­ons of­fi­cers face on a dai­ly ba­sis. He said he was at a loss to un­der­stand how pris­ons of­fi­cers could be re­spon­si­ble when it came to car­ry­ing guns to pro­tect the State, but not when it came to the per­son­al pro­tec­tion of them­selves and their fam­i­lies. Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Ra­jku­mar Ram­roop, said while the as­so­ci­a­tion re­mained op­ti­mistic that some of the ini­tia­tives promised by the au­thor­i­ties to safe­guard of­fi­cers would be im­ple­ment­ed, the as­so­ci­a­tion was a bit scep­ti­cal. Ra­jku­mar said many promis­es were made in the past and in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, but most of them had not been met.