Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son says he is hop­ing Gov­ern­ment will ad­dress the re­source and equip­ment needs of the T&T Fire Ser­vice, as it is con­tin­u­ing to af­fect the morale of his fire­fight­ers.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the Fire Ser­vice head­quar­ters on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, he said of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to be chal­lenged dai­ly in the course of their work with­out crit­i­cal equip­ment, re­sources and ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion. Not­ing that this year’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion re­mained un­changed, he said this meant while some pri­or is­sues would be di­rect­ly ad­dressed, some of the more crit­i­cal ones that arose would be large­ly un­touched.

Hutchin­son said he had com­piled a risk as­sess­ment and needs analy­sis re­port to be sub­mit­ted to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to jus­ti­fy ap­peals for ad­di­tion­al fund­ing go­ing for­ward.