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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Fam­i­ly Court staff woes hit main­te­nence pay­outs

Mothers in tears

by

20160908

The Fam­i­ly Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go has ad­mit­ted to a staff short­age that has been caus­ing ma­jor in­con­ve­niences to those who need it most, sin­gle moth­ers seek­ing to take care of their chil­dren.

The prob­lem is mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to ac­cess eas­i­ly and make main­te­nance pay­ments at the in­sti­tu­tion and, by ex­ten­sion, putting sin­gle moth­ers in par­tic­u­lar, who rep­re­sent the bulk of their clients, to ac­cess pay­ments to take care of their chil­dren.

In a state­ment to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry not­ed that it is cur­rent­ly "work­ing to ad­dress the staffing is­sues with­in the Ac­count­ing Unit af­fect­ing the cash col­lec­tion and/or dis­burse­ment op­er­a­tions at the court."

The cur­rent staff quo­ta, it added, "does not ad­e­quate­ly and con­sis­tent­ly meet our clients' needs."

With the re­cent start of the new school term this week, the prob­lem has hit home hard with sin­gle moth­ers and fa­thers who have been strug­gling to ac­cess main­te­nance sup­port. Slow and un­time­ly dis­burse­ment of the funds last month caused hic­cups for some par­ents as they pre­pared their chil­dren for school this term.

Two moth­ers told the T&T Guardian the month of Au­gust was a very busy time at the court, with par­ents flock­ing to col­lect pay­ments to fa­cil­i­tate back-to-school shop­ping.

Bernadette Gar­cia-Collins, a 51-year-old moth­er, has been col­lect­ing main­te­nance at the courts for over nine years. How­ev­er, she said since April this year it has be­come an ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing process to ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty at the court.

"You have to go in as ear­ly as 5 am, pull a num­ber and the guard does on­ly give out like 50. Some­times you not even sure to get through that day and you have to go back. I some­times go two to three days in a row... you run­ning to the court and not get­ting through."

Gar­cia-Collins re­calls see­ing peo­ple "cry down the place" af­ter not get­ting ser­vice or funds. She has even gave a woman she felt sor­ry for mon­ey once.

"Some does be cry­ing, they don't even have mon­ey to go back home af­ter trav­el­ling to the court ex­pect­ing to get their mon­ey."

A sign at the court, she said, clear­ly stat­ed the Ac­counts De­part­ment opens from 8 am-3 pm, "but they does close just af­ter lunch plen­ty times. By 1 pm the Ac­counts De­part­ment close off. I find if they do­ing that they need to an­nounce it over the ra­dio or some­thing, in­stead of hav­ing peo­ple come down there wast­ing time and mon­ey."

The Barataria woman said she fi­nal­ly col­lect­ed mon­ey last Thurs­day af­ter go­ing in on Tues­day and Wednes­day with no suc­cess.

"A lot of peo­ple still haven't got­ten through with mon­ey for books and uni­form. It have peo­ple tak­ing time off work and the line does be bend­ing the cor­ner just to pay or col­lect main­te­nance."

Gar­cia-Collins is used to go­ing once a month to col­lect her pay­ments but has re­cent­ly been go­ing three or four times a month. She com­plained about the ac­counts staff at the in­sti­tu­tion as well.

"Them work­ers does be tak­ing their time... al­ways on their cell­phone, What'sApp and thing. Some­times you reach 10 am and you leave af­ter 3 pm, af­ter the court close."

A 37-year-old sin­gle moth­er of two, who agreed to speak with the T&T Guardian un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said she went to col­lect her mon­ey three times in the last two weeks but was un­suc­cess­ful. She said with school open­ing this week, she in­stead had to bor­row mon­ey to buy books and shoes.

"For oth­ers I'm sure it's worse," she said.

"I went on Wednes­day 24th Au­gust but was turned away by the se­cu­ri­ty guard who asked if I was here to go to ac­counts. I said yes, and he told me no one turned out that day. A la­dy in line said it was the same sit­u­a­tion the day be­fore.

"On Thurs­day Sep­tem­ber 1st I was told the Ac­counts De­part­ment closed ear­ly. The very next day when I re­turned the guard told me ac­counts was closed for the day."

The St Au­gus­tine-based moth­er com­plained: "Some trav­el from all over to come to the court to col­lect mon­ey last week and had no suc­cess. We're los­ing mon­ey from work, to trav­el and still we're not able to meet the needs of our chil­dren for back-to-school be­cause of this?"

With a sev­en-year-old daugh­ter, the woman said it had been a "ma­jor in­con­ve­nience" hav­ing lost so much time and mon­ey al­ready.

Short-term mea­sures

In its state­ment yes­ter­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry said it had in­stalled both short and medi­um-term mea­sures aimed at ad­dress­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the sys­tem.

The short-term mea­sures in­clude seek­ing the ap­proval of the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease the staff com­ple­ment as­signed to the unit and train­ing ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers who al­ready work with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry to per­form the du­ties and pro­vide sup­port to the ex­ist­ing staff un­til ad­di­tion­al per­ma­nent of­fi­cers can be en­gaged.


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