Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Do not traf­fick!

This is the ad­vice of Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan to new prison of­fi­cers.

He made the ap­peal dur­ing his ad­dress to prison re­cruits at their pass­ing out pa­rade at Gold­en Grove Prison, in Arou­ca, on Tues­day.

Pul­chan was re­fer­ring to the vol­ume of prison of­fi­cers be­ing held for traf­fick­ing in con­tra­band at the na­tion’s jails.

The re­cruits un­der­went ex­ten­sive train­ing in the last six months.

Pul­chan urged the new of­fi­cers: “Do not traf­fick, do not al­low at­tempts to in­duce you to traf­fick, from to­day on­wards your re­la­tion­ship will change with friends and places you once go. You may have to re­vis­it those places in your thoughts and be aware of your sur­round­ing and the friends you keep, they will have to be re­viewed al­so be­cause you are en­ter­ing a new era in your life, you are be­com­ing a prison of­fi­cer and that speaks vol­umes as to how you will be per­ceived in so­ci­ety,” Pul­chan.

He al­so warned the re­cruits “from to­day on­ward we share a com­mon bond with our pre­de­ces­sors one that has to al­low you to wit­ness and ob­serve and in­ter­act. This is a dan­ger­ous pro­fes­sion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Pul­chan added that re­cruits must fol­low their heart and do not suc­cumb to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties that can slan­der their name and the rep­u­ta­tion of the Prison Ser­vice.

Pul­chan al­so urged them to be­come true de­fend­ers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has heard the cries of prison of­fi­cers. He said an alarm sys­tem was in­stalled at the Gold­en Grove Prison and an­oth­er will soon be set up at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

He added, “The in­stal­la­tion of video sur­veil­lance sys­tem in the Prison Ser­vice con­tin­ues. That will al­low for in­te­grat­ed video sur­veil­lance across all pris­ons in the coun­try to fur­ther boost the se­cu­ri­ty, both of­fi­cers and in­mates. This project is ex­pect­ed to be con­clud­ed the end of this fis­cal year.”

Over 200 re­cruits passed out to tran­si­tion in­to prison of­fi­cers.