Jan­ice Lear­mond-Criqui

jan­icel­criqui@gmail.com

jan­ice­lear­mond­criqui.com

Time is mon­ey. When any or­ga­ni­za­tion is in­tro­duc­ing an on­line sys­tem whether it is for a prod­uct or ser­vice, they should use testers to as­sist them in work­ing out the bugs in the soft­ware and en­sure that the sys­tem is work­ing 99.9 per cent be­fore un­leash­ing it on the pub­lic. The best testers of the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry On­line Sys­tem (CROS) would be the ac­count­ing and le­gal firms that file an­nu­al re­turns on be­half of their clients every day.

The Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment (RGD) has start­ed the on­line fil­ing on their web­site https://rgd.legalaf­fairs.gov.tt/ttCom­pa­nies­Reg­istry/lo­gin of the fol­low­ing:

An­nu­al Re­turns, No­tice of Change of Di­rec­tors, Re­turn of Al­ter­ations of Di­rec­tors, No­tice of Sec­re­tary/As­sis­tant or No­tice of Change of Sec­re­tary/As­sis­tant and No­tice of Change of Ad­dress all un­der the head­ing called Post In­cor­po­ra­tion Type.

Un­der the head­ing Reg­is­tra­tion /In­cor­po­ra­tion Type you can file the fol­low­ing on­line:

Busi­ness Reg­is­tra­tion, Com­pa­ny In­cor­po­ra­tion (Prof­it/Non-Prof­it), Ex­ter­nal Com­pa­ny Reg­is­tra­tion, Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tion Reg­is­tra­tion

There is a name search fa­cil­i­ty which al­lows the user to search for and re­trieve in­for­ma­tion on com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es in­cor­po­rat­ed/reg­is­tered with the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry. You may:

1. Search for a com­pa­ny or busi­ness name at $0; down­load –

2. Com­pa­ny or busi­ness file at a to­tal cost of $20; or

3. Copies of in­di­vid­ual doc­u­ments for $2 per page.

In­clud­ed on the web­site is the Name Reser­va­tion Ser­vice which al­lows you to sub­mit a re­quest for a name ap­proval and reser­va­tion for a com­pa­ny/busi­ness. This ser­vice can al­so be used to re­quest an ex­ten­sion or re­place­ment of an ex­ist­ing name reser­va­tion and to re­serve a name to change the name of an ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny/busi­ness.

You can re­quest the fol­low­ing: New busi­ness name reser­va­tion, new com­pa­ny name reser­va­tion, change of name of an ex­ist­ing busi­ness/com­pa­ny, new ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny name reser­va­tion, or new non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion name reser­va­tion.

A name reser­va­tion is re­quired to reg­is­ter an ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny or a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. This pro­vides a ref­er­ence num­ber which al­lows po­ten­tial di­rec­tors (ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny) and con­trollers (non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion) to ap­prove their in­clu­sion in the reg­is­tra­tion. This is a free and au­to­mat­ic ser­vice.

Be­fore any­one can ac­cess this ser­vice, ALL di­rec­tors, sec­re­taries and as­sis­tant sec­re­taries of com­pa­nies have to reg­is­ter on­line and be ap­proved by the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment. Share­hold­ers don’t need to reg­is­ter if they do not want to.

The process can be time-con­sum­ing, and stress­ful es­pe­cial­ly if you have an­nu­al re­turns to file for sev­er­al com­pa­nies, time-wast­ing es­pe­cial­ly when you go to the RGD Of­fice and leave RGD with­out any res­o­lu­tions. So don’t get up­set when some­one wants to charge you $900 to do the reg­is­tra­tion and fil­ing of an­nu­al re­turns un­der this new sys­tem.

I want you to re­mem­ber that the sys­tem is ever-chang­ing. To­day one thing will work and it is like­ly to change the next time you log in­to your ac­count.

Here are some sug­ges­tions for RGD which will help make life eas­i­er for the pub­lic:

· In­tro­duce a bar code for forms com­plet­ed on­line. This will elim­i­nate peo­ple who have to take time to come down to the RGD to have two orig­i­nal copies stamped with one orig­i­nal copy be­ing re­turned to the cus­tomer. The em­bassies use a bar­code sys­tem. Talk to them.

· Have a func­tion­ing tele­phone help desk set up that can as­sist the pub­lic. This will as­sist staff in try­ing their best to help cus­tomers face-to-face.

· Hire more peo­ple to man­age the num­ber of tick­ets be­ing re­ceived in your tick­et­ing sys­tem. Tick­ets are be­ing al­lowed to sit un­at­tend­ed for days and I am told that I need to have my tick­et num­ber when I go to RGD to get help from staff. This is not true. Search­es can be done on a per­son’s name.

· Pro­duce a how-to man­u­al with di­a­grams. This is not rock­et sci­ence.

It is un­fair to un­leash a sys­tem and have peo­ple bawl­ing and com­plain­ing dai­ly.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion con­tact

Jan­ice Lear­mond-Criqui.