As job loss­es in­crease and em­ploy­ment con­tin­ues to be hard to come by as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a Tacarigua pi­lot is wor­ried about miss­ing out on a job op­por­tu­ni­ty abroad be­cause he can­not get a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter (CoC).

Every time Rishi Ram­cha­ran goes to a po­lice sta­tion for a CoC, he says of­fi­cers give him an ex­cuse about why they can­not even take his fin­ger­prints to be­gin search­ing for a crim­i­nal record.

A CoC is is­sued by the Po­lice Ser­vice and states whether or not a per­son has any pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions record­ed.

Ram­cha­ran, 40, said af­ter earn­ing his pi­lot li­cense in 2012, he worked in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela. In 2017, he be­gan work­ing in the Mal­dives as a sea­plane pi­lot.

How­ev­er, he re­turned to Trinidad in 2019 af­ter un­der­go­ing spinal surgery and by the time he re­cov­ered, COVID-19 had hit.

“I have been un­em­ployed since 2020. How­ev­er, a re­cent job has come up and they are will­ing to take me. It is out­side of Trinidad again and I need to get a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter done,” he said.

“I was try­ing for the last month to get it done, I have tried walk­ing in­to the  Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, and I have not been able to get it done. I al­so went on­line, booked an ap­point­ment with Tu­na­puna. Al­so, I was told on Sat­ur­day that if I go to St Joseph, I will be able to get it. I went down to St Joseph this morn­ing and un­for­tu­nate­ly, St Joseph told me that they are not do­ing it.”

Ram­cha­ran said yes­ter­day he even called the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion but an of­fi­cer told him that de­spite book­ing an ap­point­ment, they are still not pro­cess­ing cer­tifi­cates. He called the St James Po­lice Sta­tion and booked an ap­point­ment for Fri­day. Al­though he can sub­mit his fin­ger­prints there, an of­fi­cer in­formed him that their sys­tem is al­so not func­tion­al.

“All the sta­tions are say­ing that the sys­tem has been down for the last month and one week ap­prox­i­mate­ly,” Ram­cha­ran said, adding this was why he had come to the me­dia.

“I am ap­peal­ing to any­one in charge; this needs to be rec­ti­fied. A lot of peo­ple need to get Cer­tifi­cates of Char­ac­ter for jobs. It is not on­ly peo­ple based in Trinidad but es­pe­cial­ly for off­shore work­ers and peo­ple who need to go out­side of Trinidad and work. None of the em­bassies or any jobs will want to waive a CoC from your home coun­try, so it is very dif­fi­cult for me at this point.” Ram­cha­ran said last week he was able to get his po­lice re­port from the Mal­dives by sim­ply up­load­ing the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments.

“They sent a PDF,  no fin­ger­prints re­quired, be­cause they work off your work per­mit.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit about the mat­ter and is await­ing a re­sponse.