Camille Clarke

Unan­nounced changes to the ap­pear­ance of the $50 note sparked coun­ter­feit­ing fears on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.But the Cen­tral Bank says the changes were made to as­sist the vi­su­al­ly-im­paired and up­date of the lat­est poly­mer cur­ren­cy.

On sev­er­al so­cial me­dia posts yes­ter­day, var­i­ous users shared pho­tos of the bills not­ing a dif­fer­ence in text and colour claim­ing that it was be­ing du­pli­cat­ed by fraud­sters.

Many warned their friends and oth­ers to be care­ful when us­ing the $50 bills dur­ing this up­com­ing fes­tive sea­son and point­ed out the new changes to the bill claim­ing that it was "a fake."The text on top of the note was fad­ed away and there is ex­tra colour on the red bird.

The new poly­mer $50 was brought in­to cir­cu­la­tion last De­cem­ber.Char­lene Ramd­hanie, Cen­tral Bank's se­nior man­ag­er of Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, said yes­ter­day the $50 bill had not been coun­ter­feit­ed and mem­bers of the pub­lic should not wor­ry as it was still of good use.

Ramd­hanie said there were changes made to the bill. One of the rea­sons, she said, was to as­sist the vi­su­al­ly im­paired.

"There is no coun­ter­feit of the poly­mer $50 2015 se­ries is­sued by the bank. There was a re­moval of com­mem­o­ra­tive text. We made small changes to the notes gen­er­al­ly that they (pub­lic) would note."

Ramd­hanie said the changes to the notes were made af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

"We added a blind em­ber fea­ture for the vi­su­al­ly im­paired and an­oth­er se­cu­ri­ty fea­ture added with a mask fea­ture added on the red capped car­di­nal," she said.

Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ken­neth Sur­ratt said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been work­ing with Cen­tral Bank for years now.

"We told them the world is poly­mer–a type of plas­tic and put a raised mark on it. Once you touch it they will tell the dif­fer­ence.

"We are very hap­py that the Cen­tral Bank saw it fit that we did not have to go to court to make the T&T dol­lar ac­ces­si­ble.

"It was a win/win for all. We are first coun­try, ex­clud­ing Cana­da, to make our cur­ren­cy ac­ces­si­ble," he said.