GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Bus tick­ets and pen­sion grants in Trinidad and To­ba­go are set to go dig­i­tal, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to mod­ernise pub­lic ser­vices and elim­i­nate pa­per-based sys­tems.

Your bus tick­et will now be avail­able on­line, and your pen­sion grant will be de­liv­ered elec­tron­i­cal­ly, sig­nalling the end of an era de­fined by pa­per re­ceipts, long tran­sit queues and the un­cer­tain­ty of mailed cheques.

In a ma­jor step to­wards a more con­nect­ed fu­ture, the Gov­ern­ment is re­plac­ing out­dat­ed man­u­al sys­tems with a stream­lined dig­i­tal frame­work. The an­nounce­ment was made on Thurs­day by Dionne Williams, man­ag­er of dig­i­tal pay­ments at the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (NPICTT), as the en­ti­ty un­veiled tech­no­log­i­cal up­grades aimed at trans­form­ing ac­cess to pub­lic trans­porta­tion and so­cial ser­vices.

The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) is lead­ing the ini­tia­tive by tran­si­tion­ing to a dig­i­tal tick­et­ing plat­form. Com­muters will now be able to pur­chase bus tick­ets on­line, with spe­cialised ter­mi­nals to be de­ployed for the Deluxe Coach ser­vice in the ini­tial phase from Fri­day. Williams de­scribed the tran­si­tion as a “huge win” for the cor­po­ra­tion.

By mov­ing away from man­u­al process­es, the PTSC ex­pects to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce board­ing times and im­prove rev­enue col­lec­tion. The new dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture will al­so gen­er­ate da­ta on com­muter trav­el pat­terns, al­low­ing the cor­po­ra­tion to op­ti­mise routes and sched­ules based on ac­tu­al us­age.

At the same time, a ma­jor dig­i­tal in­te­gra­tion is be­ing rolled out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

“In con­cert with the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, we are in stream for dis­burse­ment of pen­sion grants, dis­abil­i­ty grants both for mi­nors, oth­er re­lief grants, re­duc­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive time pro­cess­ing, and, of course, elim­i­nat­ing check print­ing, mail­ing, and all the as­so­ci­at­ed con­cerns with check fraud.

“So the aim of that project and the key im­pact is for grants and funds to reach the most vul­ner­a­ble more time­ly, more safe­ly, se­cure­ly, and pro­vid­ing the min­istry with en­hanced trans­paren­cy,” Williams ex­plained.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about how el­der­ly and less tech-savvy cit­i­zens would adapt, NPICTT chair­man Dr Nigel Fulchan said ex­ist­ing sys­tems would be lever­aged to sup­port the tran­si­tion.

“The un­der­served is re­al­ly our fo­cus in in­no­va­tion. We want to fo­cus on in­no­va­tion for the un­der­served. Now, there are sys­tems in place cur­rent­ly. Let’s look at the checks. We are print­ing 40,000 checks right now.

“Some pen­sion­ers are us­ing the di­rect de­posits, but a lot of them still re­quire the check. But there’s a sys­tem in place in So­cial De­vel­op­ment to help even cash a check. You would think that that should be a sim­ple process as well. So, we’re go­ing to utilise what we have. We don’t need to recre­ate a sys­tem, be­cause it’s al­ready there. But digi­tis­ing of checks, we will utilise the same sys­tem to as­sist the se­nior cit­i­zens.”

Al­so launched at the event was Cit­i­zenAI, a free ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence as­sis­tant avail­able to all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go via What­sApp. With no app down­load or tech­ni­cal knowl­edge re­quired, users can sim­ply send a mes­sage to ac­cess the ser­vice.

De­vel­oped and op­er­at­ed by lo­cal tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Ax­io­n­is, the ini­tia­tive makes Trinidad and To­ba­go the first coun­try in the Caribbean to pro­vide uni­ver­sal AI ac­cess to its pop­u­la­tion, ex­pand­ing ac­cess to dig­i­tal tools and ser­vices na­tion­wide.