Defence Force retirement age raised to 50

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The com­pul­so­ry re­tire­ment age for of­fi­cers hold­ing the rank of ma­jor in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment, and equiv­a­lent ranks and be­low in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard (TTAG), has been in­creased from 47 to 50 years, as the Gov­ern­ment plans to ex­pand the De­fence Force to 9,270 per­son­nel in 2027.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so fi­nal­is­ing arrange­ments to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment of the salary in­creas­es and as­so­ci­at­ed ar­rears es­ti­mat­ed at $61.25 mil­lion to al­most 5,000 el­i­gi­ble De­fence Force mem­bers.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge gave the in­for­ma­tion in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Sturge said in an in­creas­ing­ly dy­nam­ic and ever-evolv­ing se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) con­tin­ues to play a crit­i­cal role in safe­guard­ing na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, se­cur­ing T&T and mar­itime bor­ders, sup­port­ing civ­il au­thor­i­ties, pro­tect­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and re­spond­ing to emer­gen­cies and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

Say­ing the strength of any mil­i­tary in­sti­tu­tion rests ul­ti­mate­ly with its per­son­nel, Sturge laud­ed the TTDF’s mem­bers.

He said the TTDF’s ap­proved per­ma­nent man­pow­er strength is 5,970. Present­ly, the com­ple­ment of filled po­si­tions stands at 4,633.

Sturge said that while on­go­ing re­cruit­ment ef­forts are geared to re­duce ex­ist­ing va­can­cies, Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es that the na­tion’s strate­gic re­quire­ments have evolved sig­nif­i­cant­ly over time, and as such, a re­view of the TTDF’s long-term man­pow­er re­quire­ments and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture has been con­duct­ed.

“Ex­ist­ing va­can­cies have re­sult­ed in a man­pow­er deficit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,146 po­si­tions. On­go­ing re­cruit­ment ex­er­cis­es are there­fore in­tend­ed to pro­gres­sive­ly nar­row this gap and strength­en force ca­pac­i­ty with­in the ap­proved es­tab­lish­ment. Be­yond ad­dress­ing cur­rent va­can­cies, Gov­ern­ment is eval­u­at­ing pro­pos­als aimed at ex­pand­ing the over­all man­pow­er ca­pac­i­ty of the De­fence Force by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,300 ad­di­tion­al per­son­nel, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of per­son­nel in the TTDF to 9,270 across all for­ma­tions,” Sturge added.

He said re­views are un­der­way to as­sess as­so­ci­at­ed in­fra­struc­ture re­quire­ments, ac­com­mo­da­tion ca­pac­i­ty, train­ing fa­cil­i­ties, equip­ment hold­ings, lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port arrange­ments and long-term fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions.

He said this is to en­sure that fu­ture growth is aligned with na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments and TTDF’s evolv­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that pro­pos­als re­lat­ing to this ex­pan­sion will be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2027,” Sturge said.

He added, “As Gov­ern­ment seeks to strength­en the TTDF’s fu­ture, equal con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to re­tain­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence, lead­er­ship and spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise al­ready res­i­dent with­in TTDF.”

Fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive re­view and con­sul­ta­tion, Cab­i­net at its May 21 sit­ting ap­proved a re­vised frame­work gov­ern­ing re­tire­ment ages and ser­vice ex­ten­sions with­in the TTDF.

“Un­der these arrange­ments, the com­pul­so­ry re­tire­ment age for of­fi­cers hold­ing the rank of ma­jor in the T&T Reg­i­ment, and equiv­a­lent ranks in the T&T Coast Guard, and the T&T Air Guard, and be­low, has been in­creased from 47 years to 50 years.

“Sim­i­lar ad­just­ments have al­so been ap­proved for staff sergeants, sergeants, cor­po­rals and ju­nior ranks in the Reg­i­ment; and cor­re­spond­ing ranks in the Coast Guard and Air Guard. Al­so ap­proved were con­trolled ser­vice ex­ten­sions of up to three ad­di­tion­al years, grant­ed in one-year in­cre­ments, for oth­er se­nior posts in the TTDF, TTCG and TTAG.”

He said Cab­i­net fur­ther ap­proved con­trolled ser­vice ex­ten­sions of up to three ad­di­tion­al years, grant­ed in one-year in­cre­ments, for colonels of the Reg­i­ment, naval cap­tains of the Coast Guard and group cap­tains of the Air Guard; lieu­tenant colonels of the Reg­i­ment, com­man­ders of the Coast Guard and wing com­man­ders of the Air Guard; to­geth­er with se­lect­ed war­rant of­fi­cers of the Reg­i­ment, chief pet­ty of­fi­cers of the Coast Guard and war­rant of­fi­cers of the Air Guard, where or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­quire­ments, op­er­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions and in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance sup­port con­tin­ued ser­vice.

“These mea­sures will as­sist in main­tain­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity, pre­serv­ing crit­i­cal ex­per­tise and sup­port­ing ef­fec­tive suc­ces­sion man­age­ment dur­ing a pe­ri­od of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” Sturge said.