31 officers get HDC homes

Addressing a distribution ceremony at the Port-of-Spain office of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC), National Security Minister Edmund Dillon said, “In 2007, the then government recognised the importance of the protective services to the national community and the need to ensure secure, safe and proper accommodation for these members in need of housing.

“As a consequence, government approved the allocation of ten percent of all Government-subsidised housing to members of the Protective Services.” Housing Minister Randall Mitchell said fairness, transparency, equity and inclusion are important now as it was back then, and as such, earlier this year, the Joint Protective Services Committee was reconvened.

In a press release, the Ministry of Housing said that in 2008, the Ministries of Housing and National Security developed a mechanism for the fair, transparent and inclusive allocation of housing to members of the protective services which gave birth to the Joint Protective Services Housing Committee.

This Committee operated until 2010 until it was disbanded by the then incoming government.

Mitchell said, “This key distribution represents the first instalment of allocations of Government-subsidised housing to members of the protective services as coordinated through the Joint Protective Services Housing Committee which is chaired by the Minister of National Security or his designate and includes representatives of the protective services associations such as the Prison Officers Association, the Police Social and Welfare Association, Fire Service Association – Second Division, Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Land Settlement Agency and the Housing Development Corporation.”