The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has ac­ti­vat­ed mea­sures it says will pro­tect the safe­ty and well-be­ing of staff and clients, as well as lim­it the spread of COVID-19, as Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ters the ‘new nor­mal’ of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In an of­fi­cial re­lease, the HDC states that go­ing for­ward, it has im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mea­sures at the Head Of­fice and oth­er of­fices, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to:

*  The in­stal­la­tion of sinks at the main en­trance,

*  Use of hand-held ther­mo scan­ners,

*  Wear­ing of masks by all those en­ter­ing the build­ing,

*  Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in the lob­by,

*  Mark­ings to guide queues and

*  Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in oth­er shared spaced with­in the build­ing.

The HDC al­so notes that guide­lines and pro­to­cols al­so have been im­ple­ment­ed for staff mem­bers—par­tic­u­lar­ly those who con­duct home vis­its, home re­pairs and oth­er tasks with di­rect cus­tomer in­ter­face.

In ad­di­tion to the mea­sures put in place at the head of­fice and main of­fices, the HDC has fi­nalised a list of pro­to­cols to guide ac­tiv­i­ties on its many hous­ing con­struc­tion sites. Some of the pro­posed mea­sures in­clude:

*  The con­duct of a manda­to­ry Re­turn to Work ori­en­ta­tion for con­trac­tors and work­ers and

*  Guide­lines for the ar­rival on the site, en­trance to the job site, op­er­a­tions on the site and de­par­ture from the site.

The in­tro­duc­tion of a COVID-19 PASS (Per­son­nel Ac­count­abil­i­ty and Site Sys­tems) for all con­trac­tors al­so has been rec­om­mend­ed and will be in­tro­duced.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Brent Lyons, this PASS is in­tend­ed to es­tab­lish ac­count­abil­i­ty of all per­son­nel on site; guar­an­tee the pres­ence of the req­ui­site site sys­tems to fa­cil­i­tate ad­her­ence to ex­ist­ing COVID-19 guide­lines; and al­low for the strictest ad­her­ence to per­son­al hy­giene and es­tab­lished COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

“The HDC un­der­stands its role to guide ac­cept­ed health and safe­ty mea­sures not just for in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal clients but on our con­struc­tion sites, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of this pan­dem­ic and the adop­tion of “new nor­mal” prac­tices,” he ex­plained.  “We there­fore look for­ward to the co­op­er­a­tion of staff, clients, stake­hold­ers and con­trac­tors in this re­gard.”

On Fri­day May 08, the HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor and mem­bers of the man­age­ment team par­tic­i­pat­ed in a dry run and re­viewed the pro­posed mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed at the Head Of­fice.

The HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor and project man­agers vis­it­ed con­struc­tion sites at Har­mo­ny Hall and Corinth on Tues­day May 19, 2020.