Defence Ministry recruiting more soldiers; CCC, MILAT programmes being restructured

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

The Min­istry of De­fence is re­cruit­ing ad­di­tion­al mem­bers for the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), with De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge say­ing the ex­pan­sion is nec­es­sary to meet the coun­try's grow­ing se­cu­ri­ty and re­gion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Sturge al­so an­nounced that TTDF per­son­nel will soon re­ceive out­stand­ing salary ar­rears fol­low­ing the set­tle­ment of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, while the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased ex gra­tia pay­ments to $250,000.

The min­is­ter made the dis­clo­sures dur­ing Wednes­day's meet­ing of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee as par­lia­men­tar­i­ans ex­am­ined the Min­istry's pro­posed $461.537 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for 2027. He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion MPs Stu­art Young, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Ka­reem Mar­celle and oth­ers.

"We've set­tled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and the men and women of the TTDF will, in short or­der, see pay­ment of ar­rears," Sturge said.

Sturge said the min­istry's re­mit now in­cludes dis­as­ter man­age­ment and emer­gency re­sponse and that re­cruit­ment is un­der­way across all branch­es of the TTDF.

"There is a crit­i­cal need for force ex­pan­sion giv­en our strate­gic im­por­tance aris­ing out of our mem­ber­ship in the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as, as well as what is ex­pect­ed of us be­cause of our ge­o­graph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance to the Counter Car­tel Con­fer­ence of the Amer­i­c­as," he said.

The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced that Cab­i­net has agreed to raise the re­tire­ment age for TTDF per­son­nel across all for­ma­tions.

He added that new sys­tems have been in­tro­duced to pre­vent the loss or theft of am­mu­ni­tion.

"As you would re­call, 28,000 rounds went miss­ing and were pre­sumed stolen un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion," he said.

Sturge fur­ther con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased the ex gra­tia award by $25,000, bring­ing the pay­ment to $250,000 when re­quired.

How­ev­er, fund­ing for the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) has been re­duced from a re­vised es­ti­mate of $39.2 mil­lion in 2026 to $5 mil­lion in 2027.

Asked whether the CCC would be shut down, Sturge said the pro­gramme would in­stead be re­struc­tured us­ing ex­ist­ing TTDF per­son­nel, equip­ment and fa­cil­i­ties.

"The in­ten­tion is to re­struc­ture it us­ing ex­ist­ing plant, equip­ment and per­son­nel from the TTDF. As a re­sult, there may be a need to hire lec­tur­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, so that $5 mil­lion would cov­er ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to that," he said.

Young ar­gued that the re­duced al­lo­ca­tion would be in­suf­fi­cient to fund a new CCC in­take. How­ev­er, Sturge main­tained that the al­lo­ca­tion would be ad­e­quate be­cause the Gov­ern­ment did not in­tend to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing the pro­gramme in its pre­vi­ous for­mat, which in­clud­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion and what he de­scribed as "in­flat­ed salaries."

He said TTDF per­son­nel would pro­vide most of the in­struc­tion, with the al­lo­ca­tion cov­er­ing any ad­di­tion­al ex­per­tise re­quired from out­side the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

One op­tion un­der con­sid­er­a­tion is for re­cruits to en­ter through the Cadet Force, al­though the pro­pos­al has not yet been fi­nalised.

"Once it's ex­plored and tak­en to Cab­i­net, and Cab­i­net makes a de­ci­sion, we pro­ceed from there. If there's no agree­ment, we re­turn to the draw­ing board and see if there is an­oth­er way of con­duct­ing the pro­gramme," he said.

Sturge added that a key ob­jec­tive of the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise was elim­i­nat­ing the stipend cur­rent­ly paid to par­tic­i­pants.

Asked whether the stipend paid to CCC mem­bers would be re­moved, the min­is­ter replied: "As it stands, there will no longer be a stipend in the new pro­pos­al, but that has not yet been tak­en to Cab­i­net for de­ter­mi­na­tion."

The Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (MI­LAT) pro­gramme is al­so be­ing re­struc­tured, Sturge said. Fund­ing has been re­duced from $17 mil­lion to $5 mil­lion, with the pro­posed mod­el al­so in­volv­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion through the Cadet Force.

Young not­ed that MI­LAT had been de­signed to as­sist young peo­ple who strug­gled in the tra­di­tion­al school sys­tem to ob­tain aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Mean­while, Sturge con­firmed that $500,000 has been al­lo­cat­ed for pre­lim­i­nary work on a pro­posed mil­i­tary ceme­tery and mul­ti­pur­pose re­li­gious cen­tre at Mac­queripe. He said an aban­doned ceme­tery al­ready ex­ists at the site and there is suf­fi­cient land avail­able for de­vel­op­ment.

"We en­gaged the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty and ex­pect feed­back by year-end. Once we ob­tain Cab­i­net ap­proval, we in­tend mov­ing ahead with the de­signs," he said.

The min­istry has al­so al­lo­cat­ed $5 mil­lion for the ac­qui­si­tion of drones for the Air Guard in 2027.

"Not the most ex­pen­sive ones, but those that are ef­fi­cient," Sturge said.

He de­clined to re­veal how many in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels would be ac­quired for the Coast Guard, say­ing on­ly that they would be com­pa­ra­ble in size to pre­vi­ous ves­sels. He al­so de­clined to dis­cuss the op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the drones to be pur­chased.

Dur­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of the Min­istry of Trade's pro­posed $217.285 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion, Trade Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj re­spond­ed to a range of Op­po­si­tion ques­tions.

Young urged Ma­haraj to ad­dress long­stand­ing con­cerns over the de­cline of the lo­cal horse-rac­ing in­dus­try. Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Do­minic Ro­man added that the in­dus­try's de­te­ri­o­ra­tion was al­so af­fect­ing roads and com­mu­ni­ties near his con­stituen­cy.