Why dress up to receive poor service? | Letter to Editor

At an event in 2018, President Paula-Mae Weekes said that the Public Service in Trinidad and Tobago had developed a reputation for being inefficient and this stigma should be corrected.

For this, he was scolded by the then president of the Public Service Association (PSA), Watson Duke, who asked him to apologize to civil servants.

It was the most dishonest position for the Duke to take because unless one lives under a rock, everyone knows that service in public offices in Trinidad and Tobago is terrible!

Workers in Government offices shake their heads at members of the public when asked questions instead of answering correctly.

In most cases, there are only one or two cashiers out of a possible nine or ten to serve a very long line while the other employees casually mingle and make “small talk” in public already annoyed by the poor service!

The government might also remove telephones from all public offices and save revenue because no one answers the phone.

And I can go on and on. So when I heard Secretary of Public Administration and Digital Transformation Allyson West say that the dress code for citizens was not high on the agenda,

I want to convey that it must.

What’s the point of citizens being asked to “dress properly” when entering Government buildings when the service is so imprecise?