SOCIAL Development and Family Services Minister Donna Cox said she expects service delivery to citizens to be enhanced after the completion of the ministry’s head office on Tragarete Road in 2026.
Speaking to the media following a tour of the 20 per cent completed building at 2-4 Tragarete Road on April 2, Cox said it was important to provide comfortable surroundings for staff and clients.
“If you are in comfortable surroundings then you work even better, and we expect that. So we feel that will enhance our service delivery for our staff and for the people who will be coming into the building. In some areas where we have been working, the staff have not been in as good condition and facilities as we would like and we want our staff to be comfortable, it’s important for our clients and it’s important for us.”
She said there will be training in customer service for all staff members, in line with the PM’s statement that customer service in the public sector would be made a priority.
“There will be additional training, that is already on stream with regards to customer service. This is one of the areas we are very concerned about and we have been working on putting a plan in place to do re-training.
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“It’s not just to do training, there are people who would have been trained already but we need to do re-training and even for the new staff who come into the ministry, it’s very important because our ministry is a people ministry, so it’s very important that we ensure that our staff treat people in a particular way.”
Cox said she thought it was important to tour the building even though it was only 20 per cent complete as she wanted to see how taxpayers’ money was being spent. She said she was pleased with the progress on the ten-storey building and the accompanying five-storey carpark. She said the building would cost $151 million.
“We want to have value for our money and to ensure it meets the standard that will be required. So far it is going very well, we’re very pleased and it’s important to tour and see where we’re at. It’s important for the public and our clients to know we are looking out for them and building this building for them. I wanted to highlight that we’ll be having offices where people can come and receive counselling.”
She said having its own premises will save the ministry a lot in rental costs.
“Some of the places we rent, we pay as much as $100,000 per month, therefore it’s a lot of money that will be saved when we move into this building. It’s not just the government, I look at it as taxpayer’s money because it’s all of us paying the rent for some of these buildings.”
Asked what she would say to those who would say the building was only being constructed because it was an election year, Cox said,
“At the end of the day, people will always talk. This building was started a while ago, and it was in the making. You don’t just start building a building of this magnitude in a day, or when an election is called, so I would just ignore the sceptics.”
Construction on the building began on February 21, 2024 and is expected to end on August 31, 2026. The executing agency is Udecott and the contractor is Power Producers Ltd.
Power Producers Ltd managing director Roger Vieira said the project was slightly ahead of target. He said the company was based in TT and employment was split 50-50 between local and international workers.
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Udecott senior project manager Bernard Capuno said he was pleased with progress on the project.
“Although we are 20 per cent completed overall, in terms of structural, we are 50 per cent, another five more floors and we’re done with concrete pouring and everything. Then we will add internal fixtures, furniture, the external glass façade and everything. The plan is this year to finish the structural, then the rest would be next year.
“We’re looking at having greenery on the roof terrace, landscaping, we have some green saving water toilets to be installed internally, we have solar lighting which will assist with the greening of the building. We have some touches, not a lot, as greening is expensive, but we’re making sure to have it incorporated into the building.”
The head office will consist of ten floors and a proposed rooftop terrace. The units and departments which will be housed there include the citizen engagement unit, procurement unit, food support unit, division of aging, project implementation unit offices, general administration division offices, HIV/Aids unit, social welfare division offices, food support unit, NGO unit, social displacement unit, audit division, reconciliation unit, finance and accounts department, information and communication technologies division, development and support unit, general meeting room, HR department, conference hall, training room, gym, corporate communications unit, monitoring and evaluation unit, legal division, policy programming planning and development division, social investigation, chief technical officer, permanent secretary office and secretariat, minister’s secretariat and minister’s office.
All floors will have a kitchen/lunch room, male and female staff washrooms, male and female sickbay, electrical room, server room, janitor room and air handler room.
