Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent​

​At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has apol­o­gised to To­bag­o­ni­ans for the woes they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to get ser­vices at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s Of­fice on the is­land, and has promised to re­solve the is­sues with­in six weeks.

He made the com­mit­ment while ex­plain­ing the steps be­ing tak­en to fix the prob­lems so the pub­lic can ac­cess ser­vices eas­i­ly, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices of To­ba­go (CAST) of­fice in Scar­bor­ough.

In apol­o­gis­ing for the in­con­ve­nience ex­pe­ri­enced by the pub­lic, Ar­mour said he was aware of res­i­dents be­ing turned away or asked to trav­el to Trinidad for ser­vices.

Call­ing this un­ac­cept­able, he said that such mis­in­for­ma­tion is against gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

“This came as a sur­prise to us since there has been ab­solute­ly no in­struc­tion is­sued by the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al to this ef­fect. For any em­ploy­ee of the To­ba­go sub-of­fice to mis­guide the pub­lic in that man­ner is in­con­sis­tent with pol­i­cy,” the AG said.

Ar­mour re­vealed that over 50 crit­i­cal doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing deeds and wills, had not been processed in two months due to the ac­tions of one or two em­ploy­ees.

“Re­gret­tably, we have un­cov­ered some cred­i­bil­i­ty in re­ports of a poor ser­vice ex­pe­ri­ence for a num­ber of per­sons,” he ad­mit­ted, adding that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way and cor­rec­tive mea­sures are be­ing tak­en against em­ploy­ees found to be in breach.

Key fix­es to the is­sues in­clude hir­ing more staff, up­grad­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ex­pand­ing the of­fice space. Ac­cord­ing to Ar­mour, these changes are al­ready in progress, with re­cruit­ment ef­forts hav­ing be­gun in Oc­to­ber. He said as­sign­ing a deputy reg­is­trar to To­ba­go four days a week and an as­sis­tant reg­is­trar on Fri­days to pro­vide full-time cov­er­age is al­so one of the op­tions to al­le­vi­ate the work­load is­sues.

He al­so said the of­fice in the process of hir­ing an of­fice man­ag­er, with re­cruit­ment ex­pect­ed to end by Jan­u­ary 2025. Al­so, two se­nior le­gal of­fi­cers are set to be­gin work this week.

The re­cruit­ment of ICT per­son­nel to ad­dress tech­ni­cal is­sues prompt­ly and up­grad­ing equip­ment to pre­vent de­lays in pro­cess­ing doc­u­ments is part of the so­lu­tion, he said.

The of­fice will al­so be ex­pand­ed to ac­com­mo­date more staff and of­fer ad­di­tion­al ser­vices, with a help desk, a hot­line and an email ad­dress be­ing im­me­di­ate­ly im­ple­ment­ed to han­dle com­plaints quick­ly and en­sure ef­fi­cient ser­vice.

“The con­tact in­for­ma­tion for that help desk and hot­line will be pub­lished to treat with those anom­alies with the ur­gency they de­serve.”

Ar­mour de­nied ac­cu­sa­tions from Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine that the Gov­ern­ment was dis­man­tling To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and ad­min­is­tra­tive abil­i­ties.

“The stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures at the To­ba­go sub-of­fice are in no way dif­fer­ent from what ob­tains at oth­er of­fices in Ari­ma and San Fer­nan­do. All process­es and pro­ce­dures are con­sis­tent across all of­fices and are un­changed in To­ba­go,” Ar­mour clar­i­fied.

Ar­mour ad­dressed pub­lic frus­tra­tion, not­ing that mis­in­for­ma­tion on so­cial me­dia has wors­ened the sit­u­a­tion.

He com­mit­ted to keep­ing a close eye on the progress of these changes, say­ing, “I give the solemn com­mit­ment and un­der­tak­ing that we will con­tin­ue to keep you up­dat­ed.”

The AG said these im­prove­ments, ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Jan­u­ary 2025, were his promise to pro­vid­ing bet­ter ser­vices for To­bag­o­ni­ans.