One day af­ter he called for the im­me­di­ate re­lo­ca­tion of the Port-of-Spain Prison, pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ger­ard Gor­don was trans­ferred to the fa­cil­i­ty.

Gor­don said he found out about the di­rec­tive from the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons De­op­er­sad Ram­per­sad yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and will re­port for du­ty there from Mon­day.

When he was asked whether the trans­fer was con­nect­ed to the me­dia con­fer­ence he held out­side the Fred­er­ick Street prison on Thurs­day, Gor­don replied, “No rea­son. The time­line is weird ... maybe.”

“This is the sec­ond time for me but usu­al­ly we would ex­plore op­tions. I will op­er­ate wher­ev­er I am,” he added. “I will com­ply with the in­struc­tion and I will do what I must on the side in re­la­tion to say but I will be there on Mon­day.”

Dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence out­side the prison, Gor­don de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as a dun­geon which had out­lived its use­ful­ness. He said the prison is 200 years old and faces many is­sues, in­clud­ing open fences and re­lo­cat­ing it out of the cap­i­tal city is not just for the sake of prison of­fi­cers, re­fer­ring to the dead­ly prison break in 2015 and the re­cent ri­ot in which sev­er­al prison of­fi­cers and in­mates were in­jured.

Gor­don had al­so called for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to deal with the mat­ter ur­gent­ly.

Ef­forts to con­tact Ra­moutar for com­ment on Gor­don’s trans­fer were un­suc­cess­ful.