Af­ter be­ing barred from en­ter­ing the Trea­sury build­ing to change cheques on Mon­day be­cause her shoul­ders were ex­posed, Arou­ca cater­er Al­li­son Skin­ner-Bac­chus draped her­self in a cur­tain she had in her ve­hi­cle and un­in­ten­tion­al­ly reignit­ed the na­tion­al de­bate on the dress code for gov­ern­ment of­fices. How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion said yes­ter­day the poli­cies are be­ing re­viewed.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia in front the Trea­sury yes­ter­day, Skin­ner-Bac­chus said she re­fused to ac­cept the two op­tions when she was re­fused en­try—ei­ther re­turn­ing home to change or pur­chas­ing some­thing more “ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“I walked away, went back to my car and the on­ly thing was watch­ing me was a plas­tic bag and a cur­tain and the cur­tain telling me—aye, look me here. So, I say come here, we go­ing to the bank. So, I pick up my cur­tain, come back and as a nor­mal Tri­ni, I could’ve tak­en the cur­tain and throw it as a shawl over me but I need­ed to make a point,” she said.

“I didn’t know what the point was, at the time, so I open the whole cur­tain and drape it like a su­per­hero (cape). When I came back here the se­cu­ri­ty was in stitch­es...she opened the bank, ush­ered me in very po­lite­ly. I went in the line, do my busi­ness, come back.”

She post­ed pic­tures of her­self in front the build­ing. It went vi­ral, reignit­ing the de­bate on what gov­ern­ment of­fices con­sid­er ap­pro­pri­ate at­tire.

Un­der one of her friend’s re­posts of the pho­tos, many peo­ple re­count­ed their own ex­pe­ri­ences with hav­ing to scrape to­geth­er out­fits to con­duct busi­ness at oth­er es­tab­lish­ments.

Oth­ers com­mend­ed her move, crit­i­cis­ing the pol­i­cy as ar­cha­ic and rem­i­nis­cent of T&T’s colo­nial his­to­ry.

Skin­ner-Bac­chus be­lieves pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to re­vis­it the sys­tem.

“Based on our cli­mate, I think they need to re­vis­it and re­vise some of the things they have. I un­der­stand, and I’m all for rules, I’m all for reg­u­la­tions, I am not about throw­ing out the ba­by with the bath­wa­ter - that is not what I am say­ing. What I’m say­ing is there are things that are un­nec­es­sary and I think this was an un­nec­es­sary case,” she said.

Con­tact­ed on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West said the min­istry is cur­rent­ly look­ing at it “with a view to mak­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion.”

Asked whether this re­view was prompt­ed by Skin­ner-Bac­chus’ in­ci­dent, she said the process be­gan well be­fore Mon­day.

“It is part of our over­all pro­gramme to im­prove the ser­vice pro­vid­ed by the pub­lic ser­vice to the pub­lic,” she said.

Ear­li­er this year, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said all such codes would be re­moved for cit­i­zens ac­cess­ing ser­vices at THA of­fices.