The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion has is­sued a pub­lic ap­peal high­light­ing what it de­scribes as long­stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing pris­ons across Trinidad and To­ba­go, call­ing for im­prove­ments to staffing, in­fra­struc­ture, equip­ment and work­ing con­di­tions.

The state­ment comes as the as­so­ci­a­tion re­mains in the spot­light fol­low­ing re­ports of a di­vi­sion with­in its ex­ec­u­tive over how the mat­ter in­volv­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Car­raspe was han­dled pub­licly by Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie. Car­raspe was sent on leave amid al­le­ga­tions of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment af­ford­ed to busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, who is be­ing de­tained at the Gold­en Grove Prison un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO). The as­so­ci­a­tion did not ad­dress the is­sue in its lat­est so­cial me­dia post.

In the post, the as­so­ci­a­tion out­lined sev­er­al con­cerns af­fect­ing the Prison Ser­vice na­tion­al­ly. These in­clude the al­lo­ca­tion and re­place­ment of uni­forms, crit­i­cal staffing short­ages, pro­mo­tions and pro­longed act­ing ap­point­ments, out­stand­ing over­time pay­ments, poor work­ing con­di­tions, un­re­solved Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion (OS­HA) find­ings, and the ex­pan­sion of the ap­proved es­tab­lish­ment to re­flect the tran­si­tion from a Prison Ser­vice to a mod­ern Cor­rec­tions Ser­vice. The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for an im­proved path­way to FUL po­si­tions.