Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Gov­ern­ment is spend­ing far too much on con­tract­ed pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices—near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars—and has launched a re­view of the ex­ist­ing agree­ments in a bid to rein in costs.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­closed that min­istries and State agen­cies col­lec­tive­ly spend around $500 mil­lion a year on pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts. She made it clear this fig­ure ex­cludes pay­ments to the po­lice, De­fence Force, and oth­er pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

“The Gov­ern­ment is spend­ing five, 500 mil­lion, an­oth­er half a bil­lion dol­lars there, on con­tract­ed se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices,” she said. “I am not here speak­ing of TTPS. I’m not speak­ing of about the army or any of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. This is con­tract­ed se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.”

She said the coun­try is in a “bad way with crime,” but even so, the lev­el of spend­ing was ex­ces­sive.

“We are spend­ing half a bil­lion dol­lars pay­ing pri­vate busi­ness­es to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. “This cost is too high.”

She point­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as the largest user of these ser­vices, ac­count­ing for near­ly $200 mil­lion. The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly spends about $80 mil­lion, the Ju­di­cia­ry around $70 mil­lion, and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 mil­lion.

While she did not name the con­trac­tors, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ad­min­is­tra­tion was ac­tive­ly re­view­ing the con­tracts to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial sav­ings and in­crease trans­paren­cy.

“Again, we must know who these peo­ple are. Again you can­not hide be­hind pri­va­cy de­fences, be­cause you’re spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey.”

280 aux­il­iary fire of­fi­cers to ad­dress staffing gap

At the same brief­ing, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that Cab­i­net has ap­proved the per­ma­nent ab­sorp­tion of 280 aux­il­iary fire of­fi­cers in­to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

He said the de­ci­sion fol­lows years of un­der­staffing, as con­firmed in dis­cus­sions with the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer.

“For the last num­ber of years, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices… has been un­der­staffed,” Alexan­der said, adding that the short­age cur­rent­ly stands at 420 of­fi­cers.

The ab­sorbed of­fi­cers had been as­sist­ing since No­vem­ber 2018, when Petrotrin’s clo­sure no longer re­quired emer­gency fire cov­er­age in key ar­eas. Alexan­der stressed the move comes at no added cost to the State.

“What we did, we aug­ment the strength, and they should have a re­cruit­ment tak­ing place in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture to bring them up to par,” he said.