Alexander announces: 800 new prison officers to be recruited

SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

As part of ef­forts to counter at­tri­tion in the Prison Ser­vice while en­sur­ing op­ti­mal staffing in dif­fer­ent units, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has an­nounced that 800 prison of­fi­cers will be re­cruit­ed.

Alexan­der made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the T&T Prison Ser­vice's 84th An­nu­al Sports and Fam­i­ly Day on Sat­ur­day, where he ad­dressed act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe di­rect­ly, not­ing that he did not for­get his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the in­sti­tu­tion.

Alexan­der re­ferred to a meet­ing he had with Cor­raspe some­time ago where he re­port­ed­ly com­plained about burnout and ex­haus­tion among prison of­fi­cers.

"When you met me, you told me of­fi­cers were burnt out, they are tired, they are frus­trat­ed, fhe job is get­ting the bet­ter of them. I said I came from this en­vi­ron­ment which makes me un­der­stand these prob­lems,” the home­land se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter re­count­ed.

"Mr Cor­raspe, make room for your 800 re­cruits,” he de­clared. "I don't know who or what was done be­fore and I don't care... my fo­cus is what we in­tend to do now."

The an­nounce­ment was met with ap­plause and cheers from the crowd, as Alexan­der con­tin­ued to urge the prison of­fi­cers to abide by the law, not­ing that he would on­ly as­sist of­fi­cers who re­mained true to their du­ties.

"All you have to do, prison of­fi­cers, is to do your job ef­fi­cient­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and main­tain your in­tegri­ty,” he said.

The min­is­ter added: "You would have held up your end of the bar­gain, and I would hold up mine."