Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has re­vealed a sig­nif­i­cant short­fall in man­pow­er with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, cit­ing a cur­rent short­age of 420 fire of­fi­cers across the coun­try.

In re­sponse, Cab­i­net has ap­proved a plan to ab­sorb over 280 of­fi­cers from the Aux­il­iary Fire Ser­vice to bol­ster the ranks.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing to­day, Min­is­ter Alexan­der said that steps were be­ing tak­en to im­me­di­ate­ly strength­en the op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty of the Fire Ser­vice.

He not­ed that the tran­si­tion process will be­gin short­ly, with train­ing and in­te­gra­tion ex­er­cis­es ex­pect­ed to fol­low to en­sure readi­ness and align­ment with Fire Ser­vice pro­to­cols.

The min­is­ter al­so ad­dressed pub­lic con­cern sur­round­ing the re­cent trag­ic fire that claimed the lives of for­mer Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and her two chil­dren.

Alexan­der con­firmed that the of­fi­cial re­port in­to the in­ci­dent is cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­am­ined by a le­gal team.

The fire sparked re­newed scruti­ny over emer­gency re­sponse times and fire safe­ty en­force­ment.