The Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (POA) has ex­pressed con­cern over the re­cent re­port of a spike in COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es in the prison sys­tem, and is call­ing on the Min­istry of Health to ramp up test­ing with­in prison walls.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed 126 new pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es na­tion­al­ly, not­ing that 108 of those cas­es came from the prison sys­tem, alone.

In a state­ment is­sued this morn­ing, the As­so­ci­a­tion al­so calls for more per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) for prison of­fi­cers, as well as for Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide the Prison Ser­vice with more fund­ing so it can deal with the COVID-19 chal­lenge prop­er­ly, among oth­er is­sues.

The POA state­ment fol­lows…

STATE­MENT BY PRISON OF­FI­CERS' AS­SO­CI­A­TION ON COVID-19 CAS­ES SPIKE IN PRISON SYS­TEM

The Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go note with grave con­cern the ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in cas­es of Covid-19 be­hind the Prison Walls.  Notwith­stand­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice be­ing the first to in­sti­tute pro­to­cols to re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an out­break in the Prison, this day has fi­nal­ly come.

It is at this junc­ture we would like to state that the Prison Ser­vice has faced a num­ber of bud­getary cuts even as the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has reached our shores. The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing called out for met­ing out fi­nan­cial abuse on the Prison Ser­vice even as our num­bers spike.

The Min­istry of Health MUST make pro­vi­sions for ALL in­mates to be test­ed in batch­es of 200 every oth­er day un­til we have a clear pic­ture of where clus­ters ex­ist and the pat­tern of in­fec­tion in our na­tions Pris­ons.

We are say­ing that we note the re­moval of the med­ical pro­vi­sions for of­fi­cers who, as part of their con­tract with the state should en­joy free med­ical or par­tial fi­nan­cial sup­port for med­ical is­sues, as both bar­bar­ic and re­pres­sive, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing these times in which we find our­selves. Where is the fo­cused at­ten­tion to en­sure the Prison Ser­vice re­ceives the nec­es­sary fund­ing? Is this even a con­sid­er­a­tion by this Gov­ern­ment?

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we ob­serve the deaf­en­ing si­lence from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al when his state­ment about Pris­on­ers be­ing re­leased was found to be what can on­ly now be de­scribed as a lie. We must al­so re­buke the ju­di­cia­ry for their fail­ings be­cause are the in­di­vid­u­als on re­mand, es­pe­cial­ly those who would want to ac­cess bail or have their mat­ters com­plet­ed sim­ply to sit un­til..... "when­ev­er"?

The Of­fi­cers who have to in­ter­act with these in­mates are be­ing set up by the ju­di­cia­ry and the state who we have seen are quick to pay lip ser­vice when an Of­fi­cer is mur­dered.

The pro­vi­sion for PPE for staff should be with­out de­lay for the Of­fi­cers who con­tin­ue to work in al­ready chal­leng­ing con­di­tions which have been mul­ti­plied 10 fold due to this glob­al pan­dem­ic.

The Prison is a unique en­vi­ron­ment re­quir­ing the en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port of the state. Not small talk, lies and games.