Even as they wel­comed the gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed in­ten­tion to re­cruit 500 new prison of­fi­cers as part of its’ com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, ‘ the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) yes­ter­day called for di­a­logue to en­sure it does not be­come an emp­ty promise or sim­ple rhetoric.

Hours af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­liv­ered his maid­en bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in the Par­lia­ment, POA pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don de­scribed the promised mea­sures as “en­cour­ag­ing.”

In a brief state­ment yes­ter­day, Gor­don ac­knowl­edged the promise to “Strength­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and cor­rec­tion­al ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly the an­nounce­ment of new prison of­fi­cer re­cruits and planned in­fra­struc­ture up­grades.”