CARISA LEE

Re­porter

The new­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Sec­ond Di­vi­sion Keone Guy says his team is fo­cus­ing meet­ing the holis­tic needs of fire of­fi­cers.

“We be­lieve that fire of­fi­cers have a num­ber of chal­lenges.  We know the eco­nom­ics that ex­ist,” Guy said.

Guy, who has been a fire of­fi­cer for the last 18 years told Guardian Me­dia one of the ma­jor is­sues he wants to ad­dress is that of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Re­tire­ment Ben­e­fit for of­fi­cers.

The new pres­i­dent of­fi­cers said of­fi­cers af­ter re­tire­ment have to wait five years be­fore they get the ben­e­fit that they con­tributed to.

Ac­cord­ing to the Fire Ser­vice Act, a fire of­fi­cer in the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion shall re­tire from the Fire Ser­vice on his at­tain­ing the age of fifty-five years but may, with the ap­proval of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, be per­mit­ted to re­tire on his at­tain­ing the age of fifty years.

“There are num­ber of of­fi­cers who have re­tired and are find­ing it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult right now to ser­vice their mort­gages, all while there are ben­e­fits that they con­tributed to,” he said.

He said as an of­fi­cer on the ground vis­it­ing sta­tions, he learnt this was a con­cern raised by both act­ing and re­tired of­fi­cers.

Some of the oth­er mea­sures he in­tends to work on in­clude health plans, terms and con­di­tions for Aux­il­iaries, con­struc­tion of the recre­ation cen­tre, free trav­el via Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC), in­jury ben­e­fits for can­cer, heart dis­eases, strokes and trans­par­ent hous­ing al­lot­ment.

Fire of­fi­cer Kyle An­drews was elect­ed Vice Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion.

For the year so far, 13 peo­ple have died in fires.  For­mer pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon said the Ser­vice has a lack of equip­ment, which has put it was in a cri­sis po­si­tion.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Ramkissoon sev­er­al times for a re­sponse on the elec­tion re­sults, but calls went unan­swered.

But Guy want­ed to en­sure that he [Ramkissoon] was recog­nised prop­er­ly for all he has done for Sec­ond Di­vi­sion.

“He played a crit­i­cal role in guid­ing the FF­SA 2 to where it is present­ly and we would like to thank him for his lead­er­ship over that time,” he said.

Ramkissoon served the or­gan­i­sa­tion well for 12 years.

Guy said his team hopes to ad­dress the long stand­ing is­sues among fire of­fi­cers and bring greater di­a­logue and be more trans­par­ent.