Geisha Kow­lessar

Fed up and frus­trat­ed over what they claim has been ab­solute­ly no rep­re­sen­ta­tion from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, mem­bers of the Life­guards As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T are de­mand­ing that they be re­moved from that min­istry and be placed back un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

The call was made at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

The union's pres­i­dent, James Lam­bert, who led the charge and who called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ter­vene said since Dil­lon first came in­to of­fice last year, he had not met with the as­so­ci­a­tion, de­spite re­peat­ed re­quests to dis­cuss prob­lems.

Say­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion has been "aban­doned" by Dil­lon Lam­bert added: "Since the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty came in­to of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015 we have had one meet­ing with the then per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in May 2016 with the in­ten­tion of hav­ing a sub­se­quent meet­ing in Ju­ly that year.

"Up to this date we have not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of meet­ing with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary or any high of­fi­cer at the min­istry.

"The busi­ness of op­er­at­ing life­guards is un­be­com­ing by that min­istry and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has not an io­ta per­tain­ing to the life­guards. He ab­solute­ly do not know what is hap­pen­ing and on sev­er­al oc­ca­sion we have tried to meet with him."

Due to the high crime rate, Lam­bert added, it ap­peared the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry was "un­able" to han­dle the prob­lems fac­ing life­guards.

He said a few meet­ings were held with mem­bers of the Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment of the min­istry but that al­so proved fu­tile as no griev­ances were ad­dressed since the de­part­ment said no di­rec­tive was giv­en to ad­dress the prob­lems.

Life­guard and health and safe­ty of­fi­cer, Au­gus­tus Sylvester, who al­so spoke said there were about 120 life­guards but that fig­ure need­ed to reach at least 200 to man the nine beach­es through­out the coun­try prop­er­ly.

He said out of the 120 on­ly half work on week­ends due to the shift sys­tem.

"Go­ing to the pub­lic beach­es is risk­ing your life," Sylvester said, adding work­ers were al­so faced with con­tin­ued late pay­ments of salaries.

"That has been putting work­ers in a lot of fi­nan­cial debts as they have to pay the banks late fees for al­most one year," Sylvester added.

He said the drown­ing of 23-year-old Jav­el James some two weeks ago at Mara­cas could have been avoid­ed if there was mo­torised equip­ment.

Cur­tis Her­nan­dez, the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, al­so com­plained that work­ers were not sent on their an­nu­al med­ical for the past year.

He said there was a jet ski for life­guards at Mara­cas but two years have passed since it was sent to ser­vice.

"It went for ser­vice and nev­er came back to this date," Her­nan­dez added.

On what course of ac­tion the union in­tend­ed to take Lam­bert said if the is­sues were not ad­dressed then the nec­es­sary course of ac­tion would be tak­en.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said it was aware of the prob­lems fac­ing the life­guards, adding that it had held sev­er­al talks with the union.

The min­istry said it would hold an­oth­er meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ters.