Trinidad and To­ba­go has launched a two-week ca­nine train­ing course to boost the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to de­tect firearms, com­po­nents, and am­mu­ni­tion at ports, air­ports, and bor­der cross­ings.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty opened the pro­gramme on Mon­day at CSI Ca­nine Con­sult­ing Group Ltd. in St James. It is be­ing de­liv­ered in part­ner­ship with the UN Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC), CSI Ca­nine Con­sult­ing, and sup­port­ed by the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Videsh Ma­haraj called the ini­tia­tive a crit­i­cal in­vest­ment in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“This is not sim­ply train­ing. This is trans­for­ma­tion,” he said. “This pro­gramme marks a turn­ing point in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to dis­man­tle the ma­chin­ery of il­lic­it arms traf­fick­ing.”

The course forms part of a broad­er strat­e­gy that in­cludes leg­isla­tive re­form, in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships, and front­line ca­pa­bil­i­ty build­ing. It al­so sup­ports Tar­get 16.4 of the UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, which aims to re­duce the il­lic­it flow of arms and dis­man­tle or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.

Par­tic­i­pants will train with ad­vanced scent de­tec­tion tools, odour-safe sim­u­lants, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied meth­ods. The course in­cludes hands-on work with scent box­es, con­trol gear, and re­ward sys­tems to pre­pare ca­nine teams for re­al-world de­ploy­ment.

Ma­haraj said dogs are al­ready proven as­sets in nar­cotics de­tec­tion and will now play a wider role in in­ter­cept­ing il­le­gal firearms.

“Ca­nines are force mul­ti­pli­ers in law en­force­ment,” he said, “of­fer­ing un­matched pre­ci­sion and de­ter­rence in iden­ti­fy­ing con­cealed threats.”