Chaguanas mayor laments poor level of service

Speaking to reporters following the official launch of the Association of National Insurance Contributors, Claimants and Appellants (ANICCA) at Kampo restaurant, Ramsaran Street, Chaguanas on Friday, Boodhan said he was “echoing the sentiments” of burgesses and other residents who complain about the quality of service at certain government offices.

“I don’t want to zero in on any specific area, but there are certain departments of ministries and agencies and institutions, government and government-assisted organisations, where at times people would complain, for one reason or the other of the lack of customer services’,”he said.

“And when I say customer service, they would go to get a form or some information and sometimes they encounter hostility by the clerks or people who are supposed to give them this information, and I say that is wrong,’” Boodhan said.

“I am very firm in saying it is wrong because every single person, be it the taxi driver, the market vendor, the common man on the street, Trinidad and Tobago belongs to us, all of us and we are entitled to get the best from Trinidad and Tobago,” he added.

Saying that his level of representation to the burgesses of Chaguanas was a “bottom-up operation”, Boodhan said, there is an open door policy for all residents who wish to voice their opinions, whether good or bad about the level of service offered at the borough.

“I am going to listen to concerns, I am going to listen to the cries of the people, I am going to listen to their suggestions, the opinions, and even the criticisms on how we can do it better, as long as I intend to do that, we are going to have a happy Chaguanas,’ he said.

ANICCA president, Romeo Suresh Dassrath, said the organisation was set up to help with the complaints about the level of service at the National Insurance Board.

“A lot of people are having problems with the NIS and this has been going on for a protracted period of time, there are people who have contributed to National Insurance and when they go there, they find they have no contributions,”he said, adding that the problem did not appear to be confined to one area, but spread throughout Trinidad and Tobago.

He said another area of concern was the linking of the National Insurance to that of the national pension grant saying the Association intended to meet with the relevant Ministers to seeking a ‘de-linking’ of the two plans.

Dassrath said NIS payments should also include payments to one’s wife and children following the death of an NIS contributor.

“You can’t contribute for your lifetime and then your wife has to suffer, your children have to suffer, that mustn’t be so, when we use national in anything, it must be comprehensive, it must take into consideration, everything, everybody in this country and it can’t be something piece-meal,’ he said.