Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Scores of cus­tomers lined up out­side the T&TEC ser­vice cen­tre in To­ba­go, af­ter the doors were re­opened yes­ter­day.

The 14 Ser­vice Cen­tres across T&T restart­ed op­er­a­tions af­ter the doors were closed, due to the COVID-19 stay-at-home or­der.

Many cus­tomers said, they ar­rived at the To­ba­go Cen­tre as ear­ly as 6am.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, T&TEC’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Annabelle Bras­nell said, they re­opened at 8am to ac­com­mo­date bill pay­ments on­ly

“ This would have stemmed from the fact that cus­tomers were in­di­cat­ing to a cer­tain ex­tent, they want­ed to pay their bills at the Ser­vice Cen­tres, while we have had an in­crease in par­tic­i­pa­tion in do­ing busi­ness on­line and shift­ing to on­line ser­vices, it was still a per­cent­age of cus­tomers who want­ed to use the ser­vice cen­tres and so we opened to be able to cater to those cus­tomer” she said.

Many cus­tomers said, the process was time con­sum­ing and com­plained of hav­ing to stand in the sun for long pe­ri­ods be­fore en­ter­ing the build­ing, but said, it was a small price to pay to avoid their ac­counts be­ing in ar­rears. Bras­nell said, the long lines were ev­i­dence that so­cial dis­tanc­ing was be­ing ad­hered to

“The lines that you’re see­ing in part comes from the fact that we are prac­tic­ing the so­cial dis­tanc­ing. We would have done a lot of work in all of our ser­vice cen­tres, in­clud­ing To­ba­go, to change the in­fra­struc­ture to in­crease the safe­ty of both the cus­tomers and the staff. Be­fore we closed at the end of March, we would have in­stalled a cer­tain num­ber of bar­ri­ers in ser­vice cen­tres, that is to re­duce the phys­i­cal con­tact be­tween the staff and cus­tomers, we in­creased that in­fra­struc­ture in the last week and a half and to re­duce that con­tact be­tween the two sets of peo­ple” she said.

She al­so said, sev­er­al oth­er safe­ty mea­sures were put in place for the pro­tec­tion of cus­tomers and staff alike. Bras­nell said, all cus­tomers are re­quired to wear masks, they must al­so wash their hands or use hand san­i­tiz­ers and their tem­per­a­ture would be tak­en be­fore en­ter­ing the ser­vice cen­tres. She said, these mea­sures were put in place for the pro­tec­tion of cus­tomers and staff alike.