Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Keone Guy is ques­tion­ing a pos­si­ble pro­pos­al to ex­tend the tenure of chief fire of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to.

How­ev­er, both Bris­to and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds have re­fused to com­ment on the claim and have dis­tanced them­selves from what Hinds called “ru­mours.”

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s (Sec­ond Di­vi­sion) of­fice in Barataria yes­ter­day, Guy claimed that in­for­ma­tion re­cent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing sug­gest­ed that Bris­to may be grant­ed an ex­ten­sion of ser­vice be­yond his manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age in De­cem­ber.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion has been in­formed by cred­i­ble sources that Mr Bris­to may have ap­plied for an ex­ten­sion of his ser­vice or a buy­out of his va­ca­tion leave. How­ev­er, we must em­pha­sise that there is no le­gal frame­work in place that au­tho­ris­es such an ex­ten­sion. Grant­i­ng it would be con­trary to the pro­vi­sions of both the con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Fire Ser­vice Act,” Guy said.

He added while there have been ef­forts to im­prove the op­er­a­tions of the Fire Ser­vice un­der Bris­to’s lead­er­ship, he claimed the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to be hand­i­capped by ma­jor chal­lenges in­clud­ing fund­ing and re­sources.

“When Mr Bris­to came in­to of­fice we had quite high hopes. We had an­tic­i­pat­ed im­prove­ment in the qual­i­ty of ve­hi­cles, we had hoped to see bet­ter equip­ment for the of­fi­cers and un­for­tu­nate­ly that has not been done. So if I’m to sum up Mr Bris­to’s tenure, I’ll have to say its quite dis­ap­point­ing,” Guy added.

On Au­gust 12 at­tor­neys, act­ing on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion, sent a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­press­ing op­po­si­tion to any ex­ten­sion of Bris­to’s ser­vice that may be con­sid­ered and called for clar­i­ty on the mat­ter.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion has giv­en me the in­struc­tions to com­mu­ni­cate with your good self on this mat­ter out of an abun­dance of cau­tion and looks for­ward to a re­sponse from your ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­avow­ing that it is con­sid­er­ing the grant of an ex­ten­sion of the ser­vice of Mr Bris­to,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Guy said while there has been no re­sponse from the Prime Min­is­ter, he main­tained that the as­so­ci­a­tion was in sup­port of the prop­er run­ning of the ser­vice. How­ev­er, he said they will not sup­port any ex­ten­sion of Bris­to’s tenure.

When asked to com­ment on the con­cerns of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Hinds said he will not be drawn in­to the realm of ru­mours.

“I do not pro­pose to waste one mo­ment of my very valu­able time on that lev­el of con­ver­sa­tion,” he said. 

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to al­so side­stepped the as­so­ci­a­tion’s spec­u­la­tions.

Mean­while, Guy main­tained that the op­er­a­tions of the Fire Ser­vice across the coun­try con­tin­ued to be im­pact­ed by a lack of fund­ing, and crit­i­cal re­sources.

“We are in­deed in cri­sis mode, our as­sess­ment then a month ago was ac­cu­rate and we con­tin­ue to main­tain that those 20 breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets, even though they were sup­plied to us by the pri­vate sec­tor, it does lit­tle to our re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties. That is be­cause they do no ben­e­fit from the in­fra­struc­ture we al­ready have in place,” the as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ex­plained.

Hinds had pre­vi­ous­ly re­fut­ed claims that the Fire Ser­vice was in sham­bles and that ef­forts were made to pro­cure equip­ment.