Gail Alexan­der

Life­guards are be­ing en­cour­aged to re­turn to work be­cause when they walked off the job in 2020, they breached their col­lec­tive agree­ment and weren’t paid for days on which they were ab­sent.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds not­ed this in the Sen­ate on Mon­day while re­ply­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s queries on beach­go­ers’ safe­ty af­ter the life­guards’ ac­tion re­cent­ly.

“Cit­i­zens must not be the rope in any­body’s tug-of-war,” Hinds added, en­cour­ag­ing life­guards to re­turn to work.

Hinds point­ed out that the Tourism Min­istry is re­spon­si­ble for the beach­es af­fect­ed by life­guards’ ab­sence– Man­zanil­la, Ves­signy, Las Cuevas and Mara­cas– but Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was re­spon­si­ble for life­guards.

He said a no­tice was is­sued to alert beach­go­ers of the risk of us­ing beach­es af­ter the Min­istry of Tourism was faced with their walk-off.

Hinds said he and a team met with life­guards in Jan­u­ary, where is­sues re­gard­ing “their dis­gruntle­ment” were dis­cussed.

He said, “From our per­spec­tive, there are a num­ber of is­sues af­fect­ing the ser­vice, in­clud­ing punc­tu­al­i­ty, at­ten­dance, gen­er­al work eth­ic and ser­vice to the pub­lic.

“We’re pur­su­ing so­lu­tions to these is­sues which are un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. We have and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide re­sources life­guards will need to ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry out their func­tions.”

Hinds said life­guards were em­ployed and paid by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, trained for their posts and giv­en the re­sources they re­quire to do their jobs.

He said, ”All of these with a view of pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens and beach­go­ers. But lemme say, this is­sue of the walk-off took place be­fore.

“In De­cem­ber 2020, the life­guards did the same thing: they walked off the job and we re­solved that is­sue be­cause they did so in breach of the col­lec­tive agree­ment which was signed by all sides. They walked off with­out giv­ing due no­tice and one of the res­o­lu­tions we took on that oc­ca­sion is to not pay them for their ab­sent days.

“So we’re en­cour­ag­ing the life­guards to come out; un­der­stand this is T&T, cit­i­zens must not be the rope in any­body’s tug-of-war. Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is our busi­ness and we ex­pect they will stand in their of­fices and pur­sue the course of their du­ties in the pro­tec­tion and safe­ty of the peo­ple.”