Every year for the past sev­er­al decades, cit­i­zens have not­ed the fact that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has al­ways re­ceived size­able chunks of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al bud­gets for its op­er­a­tions. It has al­ways been the hope that this mon­ey is spent wise­ly and that tax­pay­ers re­ceive the ben­e­fit, since it is an area deemed crit­i­cal to mak­ing cit­i­zens’ lives com­fort­able.

Of course, de­spite this con­sid­er­able ex­pen­di­ture, some sec­tors of the pub­lic con­tin­ue to place them­selves un­der self-im­posed re­stric­tions due to the lev­el of crime and in re­cent months, a spike in mur­ders, as a mi­nor­i­ty bent on ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues to hold the ma­jor­i­ty to ran­som.

It seems, how­ev­er, that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s fail­ings are not the on­ly area of the min­istry that needs more se­ri­ous scruti­ny.

On Mon­day night, cit­i­zens be­came se­ri­ous­ly con­cerned af­ter a fire ig­nit­ed at Gem­i­ni Inks Caribbean Lim­it­ed in Point Lisas, Cou­va. Apart from the loss of prop­er­ty and in­vest­ment for the own­ers of the busi­ness, there was con­cern for oth­er prop­er­ties in the coun­try’s largest in­dus­tri­al es­tates. That anx­i­ety was spurred by cit­i­zens’ fear that the fire could spread to oth­er prop­er­ties, since the es­tate is home to over 100 com­pa­nies in­volved in heavy in­dus­try fo­cus­ing on the pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals such as methanol, am­mo­nia and urea.

This is be­cause of the lack of pre­pared­ness of the T&T Fire Ser­vice for a ma­jor fire haz­ard. Even while fire of­fi­cers from sta­tions in cen­tral, north and south Trinidad were fight­ing the blaze, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers pres­i­dent Jai Lelad­hars­ingh was not­ing that his or­gan­i­sa­tion has been urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a spe­cialised fire sta­tion with­in the es­tate.

The dire state of the ser­vice was dri­ven home yes­ter­day when Fire Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon ac­cused the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of neg­li­gence in its han­dling of the ser­vice’s needs. Ramkissoon has been vo­cal about the lack of equip­ment, in­clud­ing fire ap­pli­ances, be­fore but re­it­er­at­ed that his col­leagues are ill-pre­pared for even ma­jor house fires, much less the chem­i­cal dis­as­ter which was wait­ing to hap­pen on the Gem­i­ni com­pound, where con­tain­ers hold­ing var­i­ous chem­i­cals and flam­ma­ble liq­uids were stored.

It is be­yond this news­pa­per how, at this stage of our ex­is­tence, there are still no ma­jor fire sta­tions in the hearts of our ma­jor in­dus­tri­al sites or our en­er­gy belts ful­ly out­fit­ted with equip­ment and spe­cial­ly trained fire per­son­nel ca­pa­ble of deal­ing with chem­i­cal, petro­chem­i­cal and elec­tri­cal fires.

This was the sec­ond in­ci­dent of such na­ture in that part of the coun­try this year. In March, an ex­plo­sion at the Ni­Quan En­er­gy, a gas-to-liq­uids plant in Pointe-a-Pierre, al­so re­quired ma­jor Fire Ser­vice re­sources to be brought un­der con­trol. In both in­stances, T&T dodged ma­jor bul­lets as far as broad­er dis­as­ters were con­cerned.

With the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hav­ing rav­aged many busi­ness­es, forc­ing some of them in­to bank­rupt­cy and with it the re­sult­ing loss of jobs, T&T can ill-af­ford to see the loss of ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions still fight­ing to get back on track due to our fire-fight­ers lack of pre­pared­ness.

As such, we hope Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds will now put some ef­fort in­to re­solv­ing the Fire Ser­vice’s needs.