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Friday, July 25, 2025

Swaratsingh flags severe staff shortages in Customs and TTPS

by

PETER CHRISTOPHER
8 days ago
20250717
Minister of Planning, Economic Affairs and Development Dr Kennedy Swaratsingh greets former energy minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan during the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce Business Outlook 2025 at the Hyatt Regency yesterday.

Minister of Planning, Economic Affairs and Development Dr Kennedy Swaratsingh greets former energy minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan during the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce Business Outlook 2025 at the Hyatt Regency yesterday.

ROGER JACOB

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, has iden­ti­fied se­vere un­der­staffing as the root cause of many chal­lenges faced by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Af­ter con­duct­ing as­sess­ments dur­ing his first two months in of­fice, Swarats­ingh said he traced mul­ti­ple op­er­a­tional prob­lems back to man­pow­er short­ages.

“I’ve been in of­fice for the last month or two, and there are so many things we need to fix. Right now, we have to pri­ori­tise be­cause we sim­ply don’t have the fis­cal space or the man­pow­er,” he said dur­ing an ad­dress at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Busi­ness Out­look 2025 event at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

He elab­o­rat­ed: “Yes­ter­day (Tues­day), I met with Cus­toms. They are over 100 of­fi­cers short—227 of­fi­cers short to be ex­act. The BIR is staffed at just 32 per cent, mean­ing they are 68 per cent un­der­staffed. The Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion has no staff. The po­lice ser­vice is short by over 2,000 of­fi­cers. Every­where you look, we face a de­plet­ed work­force.”

Swarats­ingh said he al­so plans to re­turn to his life in Bar­ba­dos when his five-year term with the Gov­ern­ment ends.

“If we have to give this space to your chil­dren and my chil­dren, and I have two won­der­ful girls, and I want to come back some day to Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­though I was just telling some­one when I fin­ish this, I go­ing back to Bar­ba­dos af­ter this five years,” he told the au­di­ence, draw­ing some gasps from some in the crowd.

He con­tin­ued, “But I still want my chil­dren to have the op­tion to come to Trinidad and live. There­fore, we ought to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Swarats­ingh, who had pre­vi­ous­ly served as Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter un­der the PNM from 2007 to 2010, re­turned to lo­cal pol­i­tics ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, he lament­ed that there had been lim­it­ed de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try since his de­par­ture, not­ing that poli­cies he ad­vo­cat­ed for back in 2009 had not been ac­tioned.

Man­pow­er short­ages have long plagued these crit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

In the 2023/2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, then Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced plans to re­cruit 1,000 new po­lice of­fi­cers in the fol­low­ing year.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, TTPS So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, con­firmed the short­age re­mains around 1,400 of­fi­cers.

“Back in 2023, we were short by about 1,200 to 1,300 of­fi­cers. Some ef­forts have been made to fill the gap, but the short­age has ac­tu­al­ly in­creased,” said Dick­son.

He added: “The prob­lem is that as fast as we re­cruit, at­tri­tion re­moves of­fi­cers at near­ly the same rate. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­cruit­ment process is slowed down by var­i­ous re­quire­ments that ap­pli­cants must meet.”

Dick­son said Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was pro­vid­ed with key in­for­ma­tion on the short­falls fol­low­ing a meet­ing in May.

“We an­tic­i­pate that mea­sures will be tak­en short­ly to ad­dress this chron­ic short­age of man­pow­er that the TTPS faces dai­ly,” he said.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has al­so re­port­ed long­stand­ing staffing short­ages. The Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, rep­re­sent­ing Cus­toms work­ers, not­ed that va­can­cies stood at near­ly 40 per cent as far back as 2019.

Com­pound­ing the is­sue, sev­er­al Cus­toms and Ex­cise em­ploy­ees faced un­cer­tain­ty af­ter the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to es­tab­lish the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA).

Be­fore the TTRA was scrapped, 1,200 work­ers from Cus­toms, Ex­cise, and In­land Rev­enue were forced to de­cide whether to join the new au­thor­i­ty, re­sign from pub­lic ser­vice, or trans­fer to oth­er pub­lic of­fices.


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