50 recruits start fire service training

Kinnesha George-Harry

FIFTY fire service recruits began training on Friday at the TT Training Centre in Argyle, Tobago East.

The group was a part of 60 who were given confirmation letters dated February 26, 2019, to commence induction training.

A source told Newsday Tobago that ten recruits, based on merits, had to be placed on a waiting list to be accepted in the next batch, as only 50 could be accommodated per batch.

“The ten that were turned away were on a reserve list… They remain on the reserve at this time for if anyone falls sick or injured, they will fill those spots based on their merits. They knew before coming out that they were on the reserve list. Sixty was always the remainder… the ten always knew that they had to wait to see if any of the 50 would quit. If anyone quits during the process, then we go to the reserve list. All batch has a reserve list,” the source told Newsday.

This follows the debacle last Tuesday where 24 trainees were told that they will not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue dur­ing their ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion. Instead, trainees from Trinidad were going to be sent to To­ba­go to take their places.

The group had already re­ceived their con­fir­ma­tion let­ters as well as the list of items necessary for training.

Following strong statements from THA Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles and Minority Leader Watson Duke as well as intervention from Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy, it was announced that all 50 Tobagonians originally selected for recruitment would be enrolled for training as scheduled.

Minister of National Security, Stuart Young addressed the issue during last Thursday’s post Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, Port of Spain.

He said, “All 50 recruits going into this batch of recruitment in Tobago will come from Tobago; because certain persons had received letters of offer...for them to come to training and when they arrived for orientation, they were told that they would no longer be absorbed into this batch and that had created some level of disconcertment, as you would expect. That has now been resolved and the full batch of 50 persons who have being recruited in Tobago will be taken into Tobago."

Young continued, “There are 15 extra who are going from Trinidad, well recruits to training in Tobago, they would now be absorbed in Trinidad. So the full batch of recruits in Tobago will be Tobagonians – that is 50 – and going forward we would try and maintain this system and hopefully as we open the fire stations in Tobago, there would be more employment.

He noted, however, that recruits who are been trained in Tobago should understand that at the end of the training, once successful, there may not be 50 job positions for fire officers in Tobago, so some will have to work in Trinidad.