An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son says he is hop­ing Gov­ern­ment will ad­dress the re­source and equip­ment needs of the T&T Fire Ser­vice, as it is con­tin­u­ing to af­fect the morale of his fire­fight­ers.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the Fire Ser­vice head­quar­ters on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, he said of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to be chal­lenged dai­ly in the course of their work with­out crit­i­cal equip­ment, re­sources and ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion. Not­ing that this year’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion re­mained un­changed, he said this meant while some pri­or is­sues would be di­rect­ly ad­dressed, some of the more crit­i­cal ones that arose would be large­ly un­touched.

Hutchin­son said he had com­piled a risk as­sess­ment and needs analy­sis re­port to be sub­mit­ted to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to jus­ti­fy ap­peals for ad­di­tion­al fund­ing go­ing for­ward.

“The aim is to try and look at where we can make ad­just­ments or changes to try and meet these needs. Most of all, that is re­quired for ve­hi­cles, train­ing, ac­com­mo­da­tion and PPE,” he said.

He said while the fo­cus re­mained on hav­ing these ar­eas filled as soon as pos­si­ble, there was an im­me­di­ate need to en­sure the Fire Pre­ven­tion Unit and the Op­er­a­tional Unit were at the top of the list in terms of ur­gency.

Con­firm­ing there were 226 ex­ist­ing va­can­cies cur­rent­ly, Hutchin­son said their last re­cruit­ment dri­ve was in 2019 and he is hop­ing they can move to nar­row this gap by pro­mot­ing of­fi­cers across all ranks.

Hutchin­son made the com­ment dur­ing a “Re­lief Day” host­ed by the Rapid Re­lief Team (RRT) for fire­fight­ers and their fam­i­lies at the TTFS head­quar­ters.

The glob­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing emer­gency food and wel­fare sup­port to com­mu­ni­ties and front­line work­ers.

Lead­ing the RRT’s ef­forts in T&T, Philip Mings said they had cho­sen to sup­port the fire of­fi­cers as part of their ef­fort to give back to com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vide much- need­ed sup­port for front­line work­ers.

Hutchin­son said the morale-boost­ing ini­tia­tive was much need­ed at this time.

“They are here pro­vid­ing some re­lief for the of­fi­cers in the North­ern Di­vi­sion. So, they would have recog­nised the work­load that we are at­tend­ing to in the North­ern Di­vi­sion, as well as the re­stric­tions we have on per­for­mance and the some­what low mo­ti­va­tion with­in the di­vi­sion, based on the is­sues that we are hav­ing.”

Hutchin­son said the ac­tiv­i­ty fea­tured drills, sport­ing and fam­i­ly ac­tiv­i­ties to pro­vide a mea­sure of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and com­fort to the of­fi­cers.

Asked why morale was so low, Hutchin­son re­vealed, “So, we are hav­ing that sort of re­sponse from the per­son­nel now be­cause of the length of time we have gone with­out PPE, the re­quired ve­hi­cles to do the job, and the re­quired train­ing.” - An­na-Lisa Paul