The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic at­tempt­ing to ac­cess its ser­vices—which have been deemed “es­sen­tial” un­der the cur­rent Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance for COVID-19—to prac­tise so­cial / phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, in those in­stances where they must go to the dis­trict of­fices.

It al­so en­cour­ages cit­i­zens to use the on­line and tele­phone op­tions, which have been cre­at­ed for its var­i­ous ser­vices.

De­tails fol­low in this of­fi­cial state­ment from the Min­istry…

SO­CIAL DE­VEL­OP­MENT MIN­ISTRY URGES PHYS­I­CAL DIS­TANC­ING

Port of Spain — The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices was list­ed un­der es­sen­tial ser­vices fol­low­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the stay at home ini­tia­tive of the Gov­ern­ment on March 30th.

Be­ing the Gov­ern­ment agency that deals with the coun­try’s most vul­ner­a­ble at this time, the Min­istry is work­ing with its var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, to en­sure that the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments are be­ing made to ad­dress the needs of all ex­ist­ing clients and those per­sons who may now be in need of so­cial wel­fare ben­e­fits. 

Among the ad­just­ments made are the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wel­fare and pen­sion cheques to house­holds by TTPOST from April 1, 2020, and the as­sign­ment of ad­di­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives at all Lo­cal Boards to deal with per­sons ac­cess­ing the COVID-19 So­cial Sup­port Grants.

Con­sis­tent with its on­go­ing ef­forts to min­i­mize crowd­ing and prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing to en­sure the con­tin­ued good health of its staff and the gen­er­al pub­lic, the Min­istry has in­sti­tut­ed the fol­low­ing:

*  Per­sons are en­cour­aged to call in­stead of com­ing to the of­fice. 

*  Per­sons will be al­lowed in­to the dis­trict of­fices in groups of five (5) at a time, and per­sons who are wait­ing are be­ing as­sist­ed by the TTPS to keep ap­pro­pri­ate phys­i­cal dis­tances. 

*  Call Cen­tres have been set up to re­ceive calls from mem­bers of the pub­lic who are seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the So­cial Sup­port Mea­sures or emer­gency food sup­port.

*  Per­sons may al­so use the TTCon­nect’s Chat­bot fea­ture which is avail­able on the Min­istry’s web­site www.so­cial.gov.tt to get re­al time in­for­ma­tion and re­spons­es to their queries.

*  Per­sons may al­so uti­lize the Min­istry’s hot­line num­bers 800-1673, 800-6742 or 623-2608 ext. 1120 and 1132.

The Min­istry en­cour­ages on­line ap­pli­ca­tions for the COVID-19 so­cial sup­port grants in keep­ing with gov­ern­ment’s stay-at-home di­rec­tive. How­ev­er, where nec­es­sary, per­sons may col­lect forms and re­turn the com­plet­ed forms to drop box­es lo­cat­ed at the Lo­cal Board of­fices. 

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices con­tin­ues to prac­tice good so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in en­sur­ing that its var­i­ous clients are ser­viced ex­pe­di­tious­ly dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time, and wish­es to thank mem­bers of the pub­lic for their con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion, as we work to­geth­er to flat­ten the curve in Trinidad and To­ba­go.