Gov­ern­ment has launched a ma­jor re­cruit­ment dri­ve aimed at ad­dress­ing long­stand­ing staffing short­ages with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice, with 246 prison of­fi­cer re­cruits of­fi­cial­ly be­gin­ning train­ing on Tues­day.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­firmed the new in­take while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

Alexan­der de­scribed it as a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward strength­en­ing the coun­try’s cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem and re­duc­ing the heavy over­time bur­den car­ried by ex­ist­ing of­fi­cers.