Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Res­i­dents of St Au­gus­tine are get­ting di­rect ac­cess to gov­ern­ment agen­cies as MP for the area, Khadi­jah Ameen, con­tin­ues a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes aimed at bring­ing pub­lic ser­vices clos­er to cit­i­zens.

The lat­est out­reach was held in the Fac­to­ry Road area yes­ter­day, where rep­re­sen­ta­tives from sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies were avail­able to meet res­i­dents and ad­dress their con­cerns.

Ameen said the ini­tia­tive al­lows res­i­dents to speak di­rect­ly with of­fi­cials about out­stand­ing mat­ters in­stead of hav­ing to nav­i­gate gov­ern­ment of­fices on their own.

Among the agen­cies par­tic­i­pat­ing were the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self-Help, the Min­istry of Sport, the Min­istry of Labour and the Na­tion­al Em­ploy­ment Ser­vice, as well as the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

“Peo­ple come from dif­fer­ent parts of the con­stituen­cy, but they come here, and they get to speak to the agen­cies di­rect­ly,” Ameen said.

She said the out­reach is not lim­it­ed to pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion, as res­i­dents with ex­ist­ing com­plaints can have their mat­ters fol­lowed up di­rect­ly by the rel­e­vant agen­cies.

Ameen said pre­vi­ous out­reach pro­grammes have pro­duced sig­nif­i­cant re­sults, with con­stituents re­ceiv­ing fol­low-up calls from gov­ern­ment agen­cies af­ter rais­ing their con­cerns.

She point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to res­i­dents with out­stand­ing pen­sion mat­ters or is­sues in­volv­ing so­cial grants, say­ing they can raise those con­cerns at the out­reach and re­ceive as­sis­tance.

Res­i­dents can al­so ob­tain ap­pli­ca­tion forms and be­gin the process for pro­grammes, in­clud­ing those ad­min­is­tered by the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self-Help.

The lat­est out­reach at­tract­ed res­i­dents from across St Au­gus­tine, as well as peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ties out­side the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing Arou­ca, San­gre Grande and Care­nage.

Ameen said that while the events are specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed at St Au­gus­tine con­stituents, they re­main open to any­one seek­ing in­for­ma­tion or as­sis­tance.

She de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort un­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to bring gov­ern­ment ser­vices di­rect­ly to com­mu­ni­ties.

“This is part of the Gov­ern­ment of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, bring­ing gov­ern­ment clos­er to the peo­ple, bring­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies clos­er and mak­ing ser­vices avail­able for the peo­ple of the coun­try,” Ameen said.

The out­reach is in­tend­ed to pro­vide res­i­dents with a sin­gle lo­ca­tion where they can raise con­cerns, ob­tain in­for­ma­tion, ac­cess ap­pli­ca­tion forms and, where nec­es­sary, have out­stand­ing mat­ters es­ca­lat­ed for fol­low-up by the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agen­cies.