Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired Coast Guard Lt Com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al says there is no need for con­cern fol­low­ing a re­cruit­ment ad­ver­tise­ment for the De­fence Force re­serves, as such prac­tices have been the norm in the mil­i­tary for some time.

On Tues­day, a re­cruit­ment fly­er invit­ing qual­i­fied peo­ple to ap­ply for the Reg­i­ment re­serves was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia.

The ad­ver­tise­ment not­ed that ap­pli­cants could join the re­serve sec­tion and work on a part-time ba­sis as it would al­low peo­ple to pur­sue their ca­reers while al­so of­fer­ing na­tion­al ser­vice through the mil­i­tary.

The ad­ver­tise­ment in­formed ap­pli­cants that there were three cat­e­gories of the de­fence force re­serves avail­able for en­try, in­fantry, clerks or trades­men.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Din­di­al, who is now po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), said while such re­cruit­ment dri­ves were im­por­tant in sup­ple­ment­ing the ranks of the de­fence force re­serves, in­ter­est­ed peo­ple should re­mem­ber that re­gard­less of what­ev­er sec­tion their first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is that of a sol­dier.

Re­fer­ring to in­stances where re­serve units have been mo­bilised to of­fer ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age from the Christ­mas to Car­ni­val sea­son and in dis­as­ter re­sponse ef­forts, he main­tained that this was not a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be tak­en light­ly.

“It al­lows a mil­i­tary com­man­der to have more peo­ple. It’s a force mul­ti­pli­er, to com­plete the mis­sion.

“What you have to keep in mind is that un­der­ly­ing fact that you are a sol­dier first and be­ing a sol­dier first... you may think you’re ap­ply­ing for a job as a clerk or a trades­man but your job is to be a sol­dier, to be on the front­line.”

One re­serve sol­dier told Guardian Me­dia that mem­bers of the re­serves are not paid a “flat” salary like Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers who are re­quired to work 40 hours per month, but get a stipend when they per­form mil­i­tary du­ties.