Treasury closure leaves citizens unable to cash Govt cheques

Scores of peo­ple were un­able to cash book grant and oth­er Gov­ern­ment-is­sued cheques at the Trea­sury Build­ing on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, af­ter the Pay­branch Unit was forced to close be­cause of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties.

A no­tice post­ed at the build­ing in­formed mem­bers of the pub­lic that the Pay­branch Unit was closed due to tech­ni­cal is­sues.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Trea­sury Man­age­ment Branch pro­vides cash­ing fa­cil­i­ties for Gov­ern­ment cheques and is re­spon­si­ble for the dis­burse­ment of par­lia­men­tary funds.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the dis­rup­tion stemmed from an elec­tri­cal prob­lem.

“I am ad­vised that there was an elec­tri­cal is­sue which is be­ing ad­dressed. A rel­e­vant no­tice was is­sued and post­ed on the door of the build­ing and on so­cial me­dia,” Tan­coo said.

Asked whether ser­vices would re­sume by Mon­day, he replied: “We are work­ing to have this re­solved as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young crit­i­cised the clo­sure in a so­cial me­dia post, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to fo­cus on is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has been busy abus­ing and threat­en­ing cit­i­zens, hurl­ing petu­lant, dis­gust­ing and dan­ger­ous in­sults at In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and oth­ers who car­ry out their con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date in ac­cor­dance with their con­sciences,” Young said.

“Mean­while, the Trea­sury is closed and cit­i­zens can­not get their mon­ey.”

Young added, “I am sure the UNC Cab­i­net and all their favoured friends and staff have got­ten their mon­ey.”