Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Com­man­der Dr. Daryl Din­di­al met with ex­ec­u­tives of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (POATT) yes­ter­day, as on­go­ing union ne­go­ti­a­tions en­tered the sec­ond week. The meet­ing fo­cused on im­prov­ing the work­ing con­di­tions of prison of­fi­cers, the CPO's of­fice said in a re­lease.

Com­man­der Din­di­al said the talks are part of the State’s ef­forts to ad­dress the chal­lenges faced by prison per­son­nel, who deal with dan­ger­ous and de­mand­ing con­di­tions dai­ly. He not­ed that while their phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al sac­ri­fices of­ten go un­no­ticed, prison of­fi­cers are cru­cial to main­tain­ing com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty.

The dis­cus­sion was said to have cov­ered a va­ri­ety of is­sues, in­clud­ing Pen­sion Re­form, the Group Health Plan, Fu­ner­al Grant, new al­lowances (Tri­bunal Of­fi­cer Al­lowance, In­ves­ti­gat­ing Of­fi­cer Al­lowance, Meal Al­lowance, House Al­lowance, Laun­dry Al­lowance), and the Job Eval­u­a­tion Ex­er­cise (JEE) for Pris­ons. Din­di­al em­pha­sised that these ne­go­ti­a­tions are aimed at meet­ing the of­fi­cers’ needs and en­sur­ing they can con­tin­ue their work with com­mit­ment.

Com­man­der Din­di­al thanked As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Mr. Ger­ard Gor­don and the Ex­ec­u­tive for their con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion. He recog­nised their role in sup­port­ing pos­i­tive change and the wel­fare of their mem­bers. As talks progress, the CPO reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to work­ing with the As­so­ci­a­tion to achieve progress that ben­e­fits both prison of­fi­cers and the na­tion.