Over 400 mem­bers of staff who work in gov­ern­ment of­fices across mul­ti­ple min­istries have been ad­e­quate­ly trained on the new dress code pol­i­cy for mem­bers of the pub­lic who vis­it these of­fices to con­duct busi­ness.

From Mon­day, peo­ple en­ter­ing gov­ern­ment of­fices in­clud­ing min­istries, li­cens­ing and pass­port of­fices will now have ad­di­tion­al op­tions of what to wear.

The new dress code al­lows for vests, slip­pers and sleeve­less dress­es as ac­cept­able wear.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West re­vealed the ex­tend­ed de­tails of the new Cab­i­net-ap­proved pol­i­cy for a stan­dard­ised dress code.

Ac­cord­ing to West, clients and vis­i­tors will be al­lowed to wear sleeve­less cloth­ing in­clud­ing thin-strap dress­es, dis­tressed jeans, mid-thigh pants and skirts as well as slip­pers to con­duct busi­ness at these of­fices. Head­wear and fa­cial cov­er­ings that do not pre­vent fa­cial recog­ni­tion are al­so now al­lowed.

Peo­ple wear­ing face or body cov­er­ings for re­li­gious or health rea­sons will be tak­en to a pri­vate area for fa­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and can re­turn to the main ar­eas of the of­fices to con­tin­ue con­duct­ing their busi­ness.

How­ev­er, the rules in place for pic­ture iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in­clud­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, pass­port, and visa pho­to rules still ap­ply.

The new rules do not ap­ply to schools, ju­di­cial of­fices and Courts, po­lice sta­tions, hos­pi­tals or health cen­tres.

Be­fore be­ing de­nied ser­vice for non-com­pli­ance with the dress code, peo­ple will be al­lowed to ex­press a le­git­i­mate rea­son for not ad­her­ing to the rules. For ex­am­ple, in unique cir­cum­stances where an in­di­vid­ual’s be­long­ings are de­stroyed due to fire or flood.

West al­so said 400 staff across mul­ti­ple min­istries were se­lect­ed and trained on the new pol­i­cy as se­nior cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, West said, “What we’re ask­ing you not to do is, is to not have vul­gar dis­plays in re­spect of your cloth­ing, no gang sym­bols or in re­spect of any sig­nage or pic­tures on your cloth­ing. No swimwear, no sheer cloth­ing, no bare back, no vul­gar or ob­scene mes­sages or im­ages, no gang sym­bols.”

She added, “The pol­i­cy be­fore was a com­bi­na­tion of ar­cha­ic and rigid. What we have tried to do is in­tro­duce a more re­laxed pol­i­cy to ac­com­mo­date the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices.”

But when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed some gov­ern­ment of­fices yes­ter­day, some peo­ple ques­tioned if the new re­laxed rules would be abused.

Speak­ing out­side the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs in Port-of-Spain Can­dy Charles said, “I find it’s a good thing be­cause I have a kind of sweat­ing prob­lem. Hav­ing a lot of clothes does make me sweat a lot. So, if I could just come with a lit­tle vest, not a short pants but a long pants, some­thing ap­pro­pri­ate. But there will be some peo­ple ad­van­tag­ing this new rule. They will come half naked, so they have to know what they go­ing with that.”

Stephen Kissoon felt the new dress code was long over­due.

“I feel good about it be­cause some­times you’re work­ing and you don’t have on a long pants and want to run in there and get some­thing as you’re in town. Now you have to go home and get clothes and come back in­to town so I feel good about it,” he said.

Isaac Greaves added, “I like how they bring it on, re­al nice.”

Oth­ers said they hoped more pub­lic and even pri­vate of­fices would adopt the new pol­i­cy.