The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence (TTDF) has ac­cept­ed the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, Dr Daryl Din­di­al’s 4 per cent salary of­fer and signed off on the re­port for the pe­ri­ods 2014-2016 and 2017-2019, at the Of­fice of Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, ear­li­er to­day.

This is ac­cord­ing to a state­ment by the CPO's of­fice.

The state­ment not­ed that the TTDF was rep­re­sent­ed by its Pay Re­view Com­mit­tee.

"The TTDF’s pro­pos­al sup­port­ed its phi­los­o­phy of com­pen­sa­tion and fo­cused heav­i­ly on the im­prove­ment of its op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties, at­tract­ing and re­tain­ing tal­ent and recog­nis­ing its mem­bers’ sac­ri­fices. A ma­jor strate­gic area of fo­cus by the TTDF was strength­en­ing its air ca­pa­bil­i­ty to con­duct search and res­cue, re­con­nais­sance, and sur­veil­lance mis­sions. The TTDF is of the firm view those ar­eas will im­prove the coun­try’s mar­itime and bor­der con­trol sys­tems and it will have a di­rect im­pact in sup­port­ing the com­bat of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty," the state­ment said.

The TTDF al­so re­ceived new al­lowances for its in­struc­tors con­duct­ing ba­sic re­cruit train­ing, radar op­er­a­tor/tech­ni­cians, dog han­dling, in­cre­ments for its Per­ma­nent Re­servists, al­lowances for front line op­er­a­tors en­gaged in in­ter-agency task force and mar­itime du­ties and in­cen­tive al­lowances for pi­lots and avi­a­tion en­gi­neers as they seek to re­build their air ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

The state­ment added, "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sub­ject to the ap­proval of the Cab­i­net, the Force re­ceived con­sid­er­a­tion for a Spe­cial Mis­sions Al­lowance for re­gion­al op­er­a­tions and com­pen­sa­tion for a part-time “Strate­gic Think Tank”. The lat­ter is in­tend­ed to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment and mod­ern­iza­tion of the TTDF to im­prove on the de­liv­ery of its man­date, treat with new and emerg­ing threats, the de­vel­op­ment of doc­trine, its mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem, well­ness sys­tem and re­vised re­cruit­ment, per­for­mance man­age­ment and train­ing stan­dards."

It con­tin­ues, "The CPO wish­es to sin­cere­ly recog­nise the en­gag­ing and de­ci­sive lead­er­ship of the Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel, the Vice Chief of De­fence Staff, Brigadier Gen­er­al Dex­ter Fran­cis and the Com­mand Group of the TTDF for demon­strat­ing yet again the TTDF’s abil­i­ty to bal­ance its ex­pec­ta­tions with their key goal of en­hanc­ing the op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments of the Force with­in our na­tion’s cur­rent re­al­i­ties. The CPO ad­vis­es the dis­cus­sions were dif­fi­cult and of­ten tense but the TTDF demon­strat­ed the re­mark­able trait of com­pro­mise, un­der­stand­ing, and strate­gic think­ing in the dis­cus­sions. They re­mained stead­fast and pro­fes­sion­al to seek the best they can for its mem­bers and the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the Force to de­liv­er more to the na­tion."

It said that CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al "recog­nis­es the crit­i­cal role of the mil­i­tary in many as­pects of our na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment, rang­ing from youth de­vel­op­ment, de­ploy­ing to sup­port our neigh­bour­ing coun­tries in times of dis­as­ter and hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief and sup­port­ing law en­force­ment agen­cies with in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty."

"The CPO thanks the mem­bers of the TTDF for their con­tin­ued self­less de­vo­tion to du­ty in the pro­tec­tion and de­fence of our na­tion’s sov­er­eign­ty in one of the no­blest pro­fes­sions, the pro­fes­sion of arms."