Gail Alexan­der

Of­fi­cers of the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry who may be ill-treat­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic will be get­ting train­ing soon in a qual­i­ty cus­tomer care pro­gramme.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Cher­rie Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn on Mon­day con­firmed the pro­gramme when she replied to ques­tions from UNC MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee's meet­ing.

Ram­bachan re­lat­ed that some mem­bers of the pub­lic came to him cry­ing due to ill and rough treat­ment they got from such min­istry of­fi­cers.

"Some of­fi­cers are un­couth and un­friend­ly some­times. What is the min­is­ter do­ing about re­train­ing and sen­si­tis­ing them to their jobs, min­is­ter?" Ram­bachan asked.

Crichlow-Cock­burn said while it was recog­nised some of­fi­cers were not of the best qual­i­ty, the min­istry would be un­der­tak­ing a train­ing ses­sion in qual­i­ty cus­tomer care ser­vice and the first peo­ple who would be sub­ject­ed to such train­ing would be of­fi­cers who in­ter­act­ed with the pub­lic.

Ram­bachan al­so asked about some of­fi­cers who set pol­i­cy on their own, re­gard­ing award of pen­sions when they found that some pen­sion­ers's fam­i­ly took them for over­seas vis­its.

He added: "The rel­a­tive of some el­der­ly peo­ple send tick­ets for their loved ones and they go and vis­it them but these of­fices tell them they can­not con­tin­ue to get their pen­sion even if they on­ly stay away for a month."

Crichlow-Cock­burn said there were pol­i­cy guide­lines re­gard­ing pen­sions. She said a per­son's pen­sion's was put on hold if they went away and when they re­turned the pay­ment was re­in­stat­ed. About 90,800 se­nior cit­i­zens re­ceived pen­sions this year.

Crichlow-Cock­burn al­so said the bio­met­ric card pro­gramme was on hold while Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered whether it made sense go­ing for­ward with that in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances. She said a new deb­it card sys­tem was in the works.

The min­is­ter al­so said the River­side car park in Port-of-Spain was be­ing sub­ject­ed to an elec­tri­cal up­grade and facelift cost­ing over $3 mil­lion. But she said res­i­dents of the cen­tre did not have to move while that was done since work was be­ing done around them.

She said the pro­posed lo­ca­tion for a So­cial Dis­place­ment Cen­tre at Queen Street, Port-of-Spain, was deemed un­sound and the min­istry had not de­cid­ed if it would use the land to build a fa­cil­i­ty and was cur­rent­ly seek­ing an al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tion.