Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is pleased to see the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing in its foot­steps by adopt­ing its up­dat­ed dress code pol­i­cy.

Be­gin­ning Jan­u­ary 15, 2024, a new dress code pol­i­cy will be en­forced in gov­ern­ment of­fices through­out T&T.

The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an in­clu­sive client/vis­i­tor dress code pol­i­cy on Mon­day, which it said was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net fol­low­ing thor­ough re­search.

This pol­i­cy aims to es­tab­lish a stan­dard­ised dress code that ad­heres to prin­ci­ples such as fair­ness, de­cen­cy, re­spect for cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty, clar­i­ty, con­sis­ten­cy, and safe­ty. The new pol­i­cy would al­low vis­i­tors to wear arm­less or sleeve­less tops to gov­ern­ment of­fices as well as slip­pers, san­dals and short pants. The min­istry said the na­tion­wide ini­tia­tive seeks to main­tain a pro­fes­sion­al and re­spect­ful at­mos­phere with­in gov­ern­ment of­fices while ac­com­mo­dat­ing di­verse cul­tur­al back­grounds.

In a me­dia What­sApp chat yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine shared a pre­vi­ous news re­port of the THA’s de­ci­sion to re­move the “colo­nial” dress code from all THA in­sti­tu­tions in Jan­u­ary 2022.

He then shared a me­dia re­port of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent de­ci­sion to make sim­i­lar changes.

Au­gus­tine said the THA has been at the fore­front of im­ple­ment­ing these mea­sures, and it is en­cour­ag­ing to wit­ness the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly catch­ing up.

He said re­lax­ing the dress code at gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions is “yet an­oth­er pro­gres­sive and pi­o­neer­ing pol­i­cy de­ci­sion of the THA.”