A busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion is of­fer­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to the un­em­ployed by cre­at­ing a data­base for an is­land­wide de­liv­ery ser­vice to re­duce the need for peo­ple to leave their homes to get gro­ceries and oth­er items.

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Net­work said it cre­at­ed the ini­tia­tive af­ter meet­ing with busi­ness­es to as­sess the so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact of the on­go­ing COVID-19 cri­sis.

To get the busi­ness up and run­ning, it post­ed an ad­ver­tise­ment on its Face­book page, the com­pa­ny’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Krys­tal Man­swell told To­ba­go To­day. The re­sponse was tremen­dous, she said.

“In the first 24 hours of putting up the reg­is­tra­tion link, over 600 peo­ple signed up to work,” Man­swell told To­ba­go To­day.

She said the ap­pli­cants in­di­cat­ed they had a car, were un­em­ployed and need­ed to feed their fam­i­lies.

Man­swell stressed that ap­pli­cants will go through a screen­ing process from the in­di­vid­ual busi­ness be­fore they are al­lowed to do de­liv­er­ies.

Ex­plain­ing how the data­base works, she said when busi­ness­es sign up for the pro­gramme, an ap­pli­cant is sent to the busi­ness. The busi­ness own­ers then in­ter­view the ap­pli­cant.

“If busi­ness­es like the po­ten­tial em­ploy­ee they keep them. If not we send an­oth­er,” Man­swell said.

She said she was ex­cit­ed about the prospect of pro­vid­ing a link be­tween busi­ness­es and the un­em­ployed.

“It’s a win-win. Busi­ness­es can now find a way to keep their doors open and pro­duce, while many will now find an op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn an in­come.”

In 2019, the To­ba­go Net­work pi­o­neered the 100 per cent green army net­work cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

To get the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, em­ploy­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic signed a to pledge show­ing their sup­port to the na­tion’s sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

All as­sem­bly­men in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly signed the pledge.