NATIONAL Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips says there are plans in place for members of the security forces to receive formal training in Spanish and Haitian Creole to deal with the drug and gun smugglers, many of whom, he said, are from non-English speaking countries.

“There have been occasions when we have to debrief persons who have secured entry to Jamaica illegally, but we are finding ourselves without anyone capable in our national security apparatus to do so,” he said.

He noted that any effective preparation of Jamaica’s security services will require that there are Spanish speakers with the dialect ranging from Cuba in the North to Colombia in the south, as well as Creole speakers who are able to exchange ideas with the Haitian population.

“The fact is that we have made no consistent preparation of our security services to meet the effective challenges which now confronts us,” the minister said.

He was addressing a group of high-ranking members of the security force, including the police, the military, immigration and customs officers, who are participating in the second year of the Masters of Science in National Security and Strategic Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Phillips told the Sunday Observer later that there are also plans to implement some of the language skills in the Master’s programmes.

“We have Spanish and French teachers here in Jamaica, but there are some languages, such as Haitian Creole, where there is not a lot of formal training available,” he said.

Dr Hilton McDavid, the academic director of the year-long programme, said that foreign language will be compulsory in the course in the near future.

“We will make it compulsory (so) that a student is fluent in at least one foreign language. The environment will be created for the students to attend classes or a language lab where the course will be taught by persons who speak the native tongue of the particular language,” he said.

The first cohort of 18 students will, meanwhile, graduate from the year-long course in November even as another 31 persons have been selected for this year’s programme.

The course will cover, among other things, research methods, dynamics of politics, international relations and strategic management, governance, international and internal threat to hemispheric security and national security policy.