Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Na­pari­ma, Rod­ney Charles MP, has slammed Gov­ern­ment for what he says is its fail­ure to prop­er­ly equip the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices, and has com­mend­ed the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer for paint­ing a clear pic­ture of the Ser­vice’s chal­lenges as a re­sult.

“It is clear that Hinds and this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion have se­vere­ly ne­glect­ed our TTFS and have not treat­ed its im­prove­ment with the ur­gency re­quired,” MP Charles as­serts in a state­ment.

He al­so is call­ing on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, and the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer to “speak up” like the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, and “voice their con­cerns for the bet­ter­ment of TT.”  

The com­ments come af­ter Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to ad­mit­ted things may have been dif­fer­ent had a fire ten­der been avail­able at the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion to re­spond to the blaze that claimed the life of Mal­colm Di­az, a 98-year-old vi­su­al­ly im­paired man, last Fri­day.

“In the face of over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence, he [the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer] was forced to ad­mit that the whole sys­tem has failed. From wa­ter short­ages to non-func­tion­ing hy­drants, to the slow pace of ac­quir­ing and reg­is­ter­ing ve­hi­cles, to the need for train­ing of of­fi­cers to use mod­ern fire ten­ders and the lack of oth­er fire­fight­ing equip­ment in gen­er­al,” the Na­pari­ma MP said.

Rod­ney Charles ar­gues the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion can­not con­tin­ue to “turn a blind eye and pre­tend our fire ser­vice is well equipped and ful­ly op­er­a­tional.”

“On­ly af­ter the deaths of 41-year-old Kem­ba Mor­ris and her eight-year-old daugh­ter in April did he [Min­is­ter Hinds] at­tempt to take ac­tion,” he not­ed.

MP Charles points to the fact that de­fi­cien­cies in the Fire Ser­vice have been high­light­ed on many oc­ca­sions in the past by key stake­hold­ers but their calls for im­prove­ment were ig­nored.

He al­so un­der­scored the fact that the Op­po­si­tion has con­tin­u­al­ly raised the is­sue of ap­pli­ances and equip­ment short­ages in news re­leas­es, press con­fer­ences and in Par­lia­ment.

“Hansard, April 22nd, 2022, a ques­tion asked in Par­lia­ment.  Hansard, Jan­u­ary 23rd, 2023, a ques­tion asked in Par­lia­ment.  Hansard, April 26th, 2023, a ques­tion asked in Par­lia­ment. Hansard, Oct 13th, 2021, brought up dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate.  Re­lease sent on No­vem­ber 1st, 2022,” the Na­pari­ma MP re­count­ed, promis­ing that the is­sue will be raised again by the Op­po­si­tion dur­ing the up­com­ing 2024 Bud­get De­bate.