Complaints about doing business at the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office (CAIPO) have not fallen on deaf ears.
The Minister responsible for that Department has given his assurance that it will not be busy as usual this new year.
“I can tell you that in 2017 we are going to do much better in that department,” Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, Donville Inniss told The Barbados Advocate.
According to him, the department primarily responsible for keeping and maintaining a wide variety of business and commercial records which are vital to the orderly conduct of business in and from Barbados, is “always under the gun”.
He admitted that he received complaints from lawyers, accountants and service providers about the department.
“I said let us all get together. The Registrar and senior staff of that department, my Permanent Secretary and Deputy, the President of the Bar Association, representatives of BIBA – we sat down together for about two hours and had a very frank conversation about the challenges we are facing from my end, suggestions that they put forward and I can tell you that conversation has resulted in us doing things better in that department,” Inniss pointed out.
“For example, when you have an urgent matter, don’t just complain and throw your hands up in the air. Send one of us an email and we will look into the matter and get back to you within the hour… In the last couple of weeks persons have seen a marked difference”.
“I can’t sit and just have the public service beaten up on,” he stressed, adding “From my end, we need to remind people and show them some of the challenges we face. Not as a way of making an excuse, but as a way of getting people to come to an understanding of what our realities are – staff constraints, money constraints, etc. And then at the same time hearing from those who use our services as to how they think things can be done better”.
The Minister also disclosed that changes are coming to the International Business Unit within his Ministry. He said changes that will focus on matters such as being more customer friendly, better use of technology to process applications and respond, and to have timelines with accountability.
“When I look at these things and if we do it department by department, this country is really going to be firing on all cylinders in another year or two.” (TL)
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