Charles Kong Soo

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, says the lat­est batch of T&T Reg­i­ment re­cruits will play a key role in this coun­try's crime fight­ing ar­se­nal and, more crit­i­cal­ly, act as a de­ter­rent to those who may be con­sid­er­ing ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

She was speak­ing at the T&T De­fence Force's Reg­i­ment Pass­ing Out Pa­rade at the Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas, on Sat­ur­day.Ad­dress­ing the re­cruits of In­take 1601, Jen­nings-Smith said, "While your ini­tial train­ing pe­ri­od might be over, your ca­reer in the mil­i­tary has on­ly just be­gun.

"You joined the Force at a time when our se­cu­ri­ty threats have evolved to a transna­tion­al lev­el and are not on­ly mul­ti-di­men­sion­al but wide rang­ing in scope, rang­ing from the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of arms, am­mu­ni­tion, to nar­cotics, con­tra­band trade, and with­in our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, ter­ror­ism and mon­ey laun­der­ing."

She added, "The chal­lenges that con­front our na­tion call for those that pro­tect and de­fend our na­tion to be ver­sa­tile and adapt­able, blend­ing tra­di­tion­al roles which are more ex­pan­sive roles.

"In ad­di­tion to your core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­fend­ing this na­tion from both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal ag­gres­sion, you must un­der­stand your role in pre­vent­ing crime."

She told the 29 re­cruits that they will no doubt ap­pre­ci­ate the co­op­er­a­tive role that the T&T De­fence Force played in law en­force­ment by way of joint pa­trols with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Jen­nings-Smith said their vis­i­bil­i­ty and pres­ence in the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties on a reg­u­lar ba­sis had en­gen­dered safer com­mu­ni­ties and brought a mea­sure of com­fort to the large­ly law-abid­ing res­i­dents. She said apart from joint op­er­a­tions, the re­cruits, as mem­bers of the TTDF, were al­so ex­pect­ed to play a part in im­prov­ing the so­cial fab­ric of their com­mu­ni­ties by be­com­ing role mod­els to the youths and moral­ly dis­cour­ag­ing any signs of law­less­ness that may ex­ist in their en­vi­ron­ment.

Act­ing T&T Reg­i­ment Com­man­der Colonel DL Fran­cis said the re­cruits and their units had their spe­cif­ic mis­sions and tasks in re­la­tion to as­sist­ing the Reg­i­ment to ac­com­plish its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to­wards the TTDF in de­liv­er­ing de­fence, se­cu­ri­ty and de­vel­op­ment ser­vices to the State. He said this was a man­date that was as com­plex as it was chal­leng­ing in the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment.

Fran­cis said the mem­bers of In­take 1601 were there­fore now part of a ro­bust, dy­nam­ic and de­vel­op­ing de­fence se­cu­ri­ty and de­vel­op­ment ar­chi­tec­ture that in­tend­ed to guar­an­tee to the cit­i­zens of T&T that they were in good hands and with the con­fi­dence that if called up­on they will re­spond pos­i­tive­ly to do their du­ty.