Sto­ry by RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Ap­pli­ca­tions for Cer­tifi­cates of Char­ac­ter (CoC) have been sus­pend­ed be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that has hit T&T shores.

Up to mid­day on Thurs­day, there were nine con­firmed cas­es in this coun­try, all of which have been im­port­ed cas­es.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that peo­ple seek­ing to ap­ply for CoCs at var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions through­out the coun­try have been turned away since Mon­day, and in some cas­es, since last week.

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Fran­cis Joseph, con­firmed with the Guardian Me­dia and added that the sus­pen­sion took ef­fect from Mon­day this week.

"There is a sus­pen­sion for one month on ap­pli­ca­tions for cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter be­cause of COVID-19," Joseph said.

A CoC is an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment is­sued by the TTPS which states whether a per­son has a record of pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions in Trinidad or To­ba­go.

In most cas­es, a CoC from a per­son is re­quired by po­ten­tial places of em­ploy­ment, as well as by land­lords of prop­er­ties (com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial) for rent or lease agree­ments.