FALMOUTH, Trelawny — The Trelawny Parish Council says there has been a strong positive response to its recruitment drive to fill vacancies available in the council’s municipal police department.

Chairman of the council and mayor of Falmouth Colin Gager told the Observer West earlier this week that the local authority has received a flood of applications from persons interested in filling the six vacancies.

“We have been getting a lot of applications and we are now going through some of them with a fine teeth comb to ensure that we select the right persons,” he said.

Just over two years ago, the council recruited eight municipal police but since then there has been a 50 per cent reduction in the number of persons employed to the force.

“Some of them that were recruited weren’t the right people for the job. They could not really manage the rigorous of it, so they decided to quit,” he said.

The remaining members, Gager said, are over-worked and cannot effectively undertake the raft of required duties.

“They cannot cover all the places that we have,” he said. Because we have the market; the car park; we have the paid parking system in and around Falmouth and that call for a lot of supervision, so we really need people now,” he explained.

It is expected that the new recruits will be trained and installed within another two months.

Meanwhile, the permit system introduced by the council just over six months ago to control traffic flow in the town of Falmouth, as well as to increase revenue intake, has been going satisfactorily, Gager said.

“The paid parking is going very well. In fact the motorists are conforming to the rules and regulations. They have been buying their parking tickets and so on,” he told the Observer West.

Added Gager: “Weeks ago we had the taxis parking at different places, causing much confusion and congestion within the busy town, but now that is no more.”

Areas where paid parking are now in force include Water Square, Cornwall Street, Trelawny Street, King Street, Market Street and Georges Street.

The council, the Observer West was told, rakes in roughly $400,000 monthly for its paid parking system.