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Monday, July 14, 2025

Public Administration minister: Dress code not high on agenda

by

1280 days ago
20220110
Allyson West, Minister of Public Administration and Digital Transformation

Allyson West, Minister of Public Administration and Digital Transformation


Un­like their To­ba­go coun­ter­parts, mem­bers of the pub­lic in Trinidad, out­fit­ted in slip­pers, sleeve­less or short pants will have to wait a bit longer to ac­cess pub­lic of­fices.

Ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter, Allyson West, while ef­forts were on­go­ing as it re­lat­ed to pub­lic ser­vice re­form, dress code was not high on the agen­da.

“There are just too many more im­por­tant ar­eas of fo­cus for us to turn our at­ten­tion to dress code at this time. Any ad­just­ment to that may come in the fu­ture will be a whole of gov­ern­ment ap­proach.”

Min­is­ter West’s com­ment on Mon­day was in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about re­cent plans an­nounced by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Augs­tine’s to re­move dress code poli­cies at THA build­ings. At a me­dia brief­ing,  Au­gus­tine said the pol­i­cy change was not for work­ers but for the pub­lic and among sweep­ing changes aimed at im­prov­ing cit­i­zens ac­cess to ser­vices. Au­gus­tine la­belled the cur­rent sys­tem as a ves­tige of colo­nial­ism.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to cit­i­zens out­side sev­er­al pub­lic of­fices in Port of Spain, many of whom were in sup­port of the re­ver­sal of the dress code pol­i­cy and for sim­i­lar steps to be tak­en in Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to Hei­di Balka­ran, ” We have to up­grade, be­cause I don’t see noth­ing wrong if you come in a slip­pers or an arm­less, I re­al­ly can’t see no prob­lem…is clothes we have on.”

A woman out­side the min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs said,

” We could go with slip­pers, lit­tle sleeve­less, I re­al­ly can’t un­der­stand why we have a prob­lem.”

Chris­t­ian Phile­mon was al­so in agree­ment with Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine who an­nounced the re­moval of the pol­i­cy on Sun­day, for him, the man­date came at a cost.

” My step­fa­ther re­cent­ly passed away and I need­ed to get the land and build­ing tax­es. So, we had to come here and I was di­rect­ed from the oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fices but I was told I couldn’t en­ter be­cause of my at­tire.

Al­most every day some­one vis­it­ing a pub­lic of­fice shares Phile­mon’s ex­pe­ri­ence. Over in To­ba­go, cit­i­zens have al­ready start­ed em­brac­ing the change.

Dave Raphael said, “In a lit­tle while we’ll have our vis­i­tors re­turn­ing to our is­lands and if an in­ci­dent should hap­pen to one of them, I’m not say­ing you should go half-naked, I’m sure peo­ple will use dis­cre­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Nico­la Pierre, once dis­cre­tion is used, there should be no is­sues.

” I find it will be good where­as you could run in not too in­ap­pro­pri­ate, but with the slip­pers, be­cause you know not every­body could af­ford cer­tain things and stuff.”

Has the time come to shift away from what Au­gus­tine de­scribed as the “ves­tiges of colo­nial­ism” here in Trinidad? Com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant and blog­ger Den­nise Dem­ming was in sup­port for more rea­sons than one.

” If we are go­ing to de­ny cit­i­zens ac­cess to gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions be­cause of what they are wear­ing then we need to re-think, be­cause let us say that per­son had come from a priv­i­leged en­vi­ron­ment, they would have been dropped off, dressed what­ev­er and would have had every­thing cov­ered so this is a so­cial jus­tice is­sue.”

Ac­cord­ing to her, the au­thor­i­ties must con­sid­er re­design­ing sys­tems so as to make ac­cess to pub­lic of­fices and ser­vices eas­i­er for cit­i­zens.

Re­porter: Jesse Ramdeo


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