RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

More than two dozen of­fi­cers have been tem­porar­i­ly re­as­signed to the Port-of-Spain Prison to help man­age the short­age of staff.

This was dis­closed to Guardian Me­dia by act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar.

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ger­ard Gor­don, was one of those who were trans­ferred. Gor­don was trans­ferred from the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Fa­cil­i­ty and will pick up du­ty at the Port-of-Spain Prison to­mor­row morn­ing.

Gor­don’s trans­fer came just one day af­ter he called for the im­me­di­ate re­lo­ca­tion of the Port-of-Spain Prison.

The trans­fer was a di­rec­tive from Ra­moutar. Gor­don said he on­ly re­ceived the in­struc­tion on Fri­day af­ter­noon.

Asked if he was giv­en a rea­son for his trans­fer and if he felt it was con­nect­ed to Thurs­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence, Gor­don replied, “No rea­son. The time­line is weird, maybe.”

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence out­side the prison on Thurs­day morn­ing, Gor­don de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as a dun­geon, say­ing it has out­lived its use­ful­ness.

Gor­don al­so not­ed that it is 200 years old and faces many is­sues, in­clud­ing open fences.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ra­moutar said the trans­fer was nor­mal and not a re­sult of Gor­don’s state­ments. “Yes, but it has noth­ing to do with his me­dia state­ment. Gor­don is a prison of­fi­cer and has to per­form such du­ties. He is among many of­fi­cers who will be called up­on to as­sist their broth­er of­fi­cers in times of stress un­less they choose to fall sick,” Ra­moutar added.