Casan­draTh­omp­son-Forbes

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says all 50 To­ba­go fire-fight­ing trainees sched­uled to com­mence train­ing to­day (Fri­day) will do so as planned.

The an­nounce­ment came on the heels of 26 trainees be­ing told last Tues­day, dur­ing their ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion, that they will not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue, while trainees from Trinidad would be sent to To­ba­go to take their places with­out any valid ex­pla­na­tion. The rev­e­la­tion did not sit well with the dis­grun­tled trainees, who felt they were be­ing dis­en­fran­chised.

The group had re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion let­ters as well as the go-ahead to pur­chase ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5,000 in gears in prepa­ra­tion for train­ing be­fore they were told the train­ing was scrapped. Oth­ers in the group were con­cerned about their fu­tures, as some of them had re­signed their jobs and sold valu­ables in or­der to take up their new roles.

But speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing on Thurs­day, Young said he was made aware of the mat­ter at the open­ing of the new­ly-built Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion ear­li­er this week and im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ken­ny Gopaul and the mat­ter was ad­dressed.

To­ba­go MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, as well as THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, who were made aware of the sit­u­a­tion, al­so made rep­re­sen­ta­tions to Young to have the mat­ter re­solved

"I am hap­py to say to­day all fifty re­cruits go­ing for­ward, go­ing in­to this batch of re­cruit­ment in To­ba­go will come from To­ba­go, be­cause cer­tain per­sons had re­ceived let­ters of of­fer, of­fer­ing them to come train­ing and when they ar­rived for ori­en­ta­tion, they were told they would no longer be ab­sorbed in­to this batch and that had cre­at­ed some lev­el dis­con­cert­ment as you would ex­pect,” Young said.

“That has now been re­solved. The full batch of 50 per­sons who are be­ing re­cruit­ed in To­ba­go will be tak­en in To­ba­go, there are 15 ex­tra fire re­cruits who were go­ing from Trinidad to To­ba­go, they will now be ab­sorbed in Trinidad, so the full batch of re­cruits in To­ba­go will be To­bag­o­ni­ans."

In Sep­tem­ber 2018, a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the Fire Ser­vice, Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment and Labour and the Ar­gyle Vil­lage Coun­cil was signed, sig­nalling the start of a re­la­tion­ship among the three par­ties to have 50 To­bag­on­ian trainees de­sirous of join­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice train on the is­land. The new agree­ment was de­vel­oped so that more per­sons from To­ba­go would par­tic­i­pate in the train­ing but al­so di­min­ished the added pres­sure of be­ing in an un­fa­mil­iar lo­ca­tion.

The Ar­gyle fa­cil­i­ty has the ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date 80 re­cruits at any giv­en time. Plans are al­so un­der­way to con­struct two new fire sta­tions at Rox­bor­ough and Black Rock. How­ev­er, Young said go­ing for­ward the min­istry will try to main­tain the sys­tem and as the new fire sta­tions are opened there would be ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ment.

He al­so re­mind­ed re­cruits that due to lim­it­ed va­can­cies on the is­land, when their train­ing is com­plet­ed some would be as­signed to work in Trinidad

"What I'm go­ing to put on the ta­ble at this stage, is for those re­cruits be­ing trained in To­ba­go, un­der­stand that at the end of your train­ing once you're suc­cess­ful there may not be 50 job po­si­tions for fire of­fi­cers in To­ba­go, so some will have to work in Trinidad, but the good news is all who were made the of­fers are be­ing ab­sorbed in To­ba­go," he said.

The re­cruits are sched­uled to com­mence train­ing at 0600 hours on Fri­day.