Six­ty-five per cent of this coun­try’s Traf­fic War­dens have left the job, Chief Traf­fic War­den Ran­dolph Pro­tain said yes­ter­day.

“From the in­cep­tion of the Traf­fic War­den Di­vi­sion we have re­cruit­ed five batch­es that to­talled 399,” Pro­tain said.

“It is a sad thing to say to date we have 140-some­thing, said.

Pro­tain made the state­ment on Wednes­day as the Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture con­tin­ued its pub­lic in­quiry in­to the ef­fec­tive­ness of mea­sures in place to re­duce traf­fic con­ges­tion on the na­tion’s roads.

He said the Traf­fic War­den Di­vi­sion has be­come a feed­ing trough for oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies in this coun­try.

The Traf­fic War­den Di­vi­sion was es­tab­lished in 2011 with the man­date to as­sist po­lice in the con­trol and reg­u­la­tion of road traf­fic, Pro­tain said.

It, how­ev­er, has be­come a de fac­to train­ing ground for oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies, he said.

“What we find is hap­pen­ing is that we find oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies and oth­er like agen­cies they are feed­ing on the peo­ple we’ve trained or have trained,” Pro­tain said.

“So they feed on us as a mat­ter of fact as re­cent as the 24th of last month we lost to the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice 25 and the in­take pri­or to that we lost 20 some­thing,” he said.

“So we be­lieve we are do­ing a good thing at Traf­fic War­den di­vi­sion and prepar­ing a step­ping stone for oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies so we feel proud about it we think it’s a pos­i­tive, it sug­gests to us that we are do­ing some­thing good,” he said.

How­ev­er, I will tell you the Min­istry has not turned a blind eye to what is hap­pen­ing. As we speak we ex­pect to have an in­take short­ly, Pro­tain said.

Pro­tain said the Traf­fic War­den Di­vi­sion will have an as­sess­ment ex­am on Sun­day (Moth­er’s Day) to re­cruit 100 more and we hope to re­cruit an­oth­er 200 to bring this back up,” he said.