Crown Land Review says Crown Land Unit 48% understaffed, mandates improvements

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer

#TurksandCaicos, December 23, 2022 – The Crown Land Unit is 48 per cent understaffed and the plan is to bolster the numbers in order to ensure more expedient service when it comes to land ownership, acquisition and enquires in the TCI.  Residents have been vocally critical about customer service in the country’s public service for years and the new Crown Land Recommendations are taking that into consideration with strict rules for how both customers and employees are to be treated.

The recommendations agreed to by the Government mandates dozens of new processes be carried out by new and existing departments and proper customer service and staffing are high on the list of must haves.

In that vein the Crown land Unit will undergo new training processes, under observation. The recommendations mandate that:

“CLU counter staff and their managers undertake training in public interaction and customer service; that a period of monitoring of staff handling of customer inquiries should be carried out; that there should be an internal review of the processes for (i) logging incoming post and email correspondence, and (ii) dealing with common types of inquiries.”

The consultant said, during their interviews, the consistent opinion was that the CLU was under-staffed and under-resourced which they confirmed. The unit has only nine staff members carrying a workload meant for 17 people.

The Consultants, representing the Turks and Caicos and United Kingdom interests have called for increased staff to handle the likely influx of customers.  The review has cited that an upgrade from the cramped space in Provo, is also vital for smoother operations.

“A further staff post should be created to deal with postal and email inquiries and the retrieval of information and to provide extra coverage for the public counter— financial provision should be made to increase the office space and the public space in the CLU accommodation in Providenciales,” they maintained.

The government has said it agreed to all of these recommendations along with the UK but how quickly they will be implemented is so far, unaddressed.