One hun­dred and sev­en­ty re­cruits joined the ranks of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a pass­ing out pa­rade at Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas.

The pa­rade in­volved 105 new mem­bers of the Reg­i­ment, 42 mem­bers of the Coast Guard and 23 mem­bers of the Air Guard, who un­der­took five months of train­ing.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds com­mend­ed the re­cruits on their de­ci­sion to serve the coun­try, as he con­grat­u­lat­ed them for suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing their mil­i­tary in­duc­tion train­ing pro­gramme.

“Serve with dig­ni­ty, in­tegri­ty, pride and pro­fes­sion­al­ism,” he said.

He re­mind­ed the in­com­ing sol­diers, sailors and air per­son­nel that they will be held to the high­est stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty and strong­ly ad­vised them to “nev­er en­gage in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties or char­ac­ter un­be­com­ing of the uni­form they now wear.”

Hinds as­sured that the min­istry will con­tin­ue to pro­vide the De­fence Force with the re­quire­ments to ful­fil its op­er­a­tional man­date, as he said the two new Cape Class Pa­trol Ves­sels re­cent­ly re­ceived by the Coast Guard will soon be com­mis­sioned in­to ser­vice to pro­vide mar­itime pro­tec­tion across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that the req­ui­site sup­port to the Air Guard will con­tin­ue, as it re­lates to its in­creased aer­i­al op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, work is un­der­way to re­fur­bish the TTDF’s main me­chan­i­cal work­shop lo­cat­ed at Camp Cu­mu­to, which will con­tin­ue to be utilised to main­tain and ser­vice the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ve­hi­cles.