Collecting child support at the court is an unbearable hassle

Mar 15, 2015 News

– says frustrated mothers

By Feona Morrison

It’s a hot weekday morning; a mother sits on a hard wooden bench, her baby crying loudly in her arms as she struggles to quiet him. Around her, other mothers sit, waiting impatiently for the office to open for them to collect the money they rightfully deserve.
This is a regular scene at the Collection Office at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.
The office has come under great scrutiny over the past few weeks, as frustrated mothers vented their anguish at the poor level of service they have been receiving at the hands of staffers assigned to that department in collecting child support payments.
The mothers who depend on every dime to provide for their children describe the situation as an unbearable one.
Several women who come from various parts of the country to collect monies from the Magistrates’ Courts complained to Kaieteur News about the inconvenience.
One of the women, who gave her name as Krissel Haynes, stressed that the situation is getting very unbearable. She said she would have to take time off from her job to be at the collecting office for 08:30hrs. Haynes stated that she does not have a problem coming to the office since the money is always there. However, she said, she has a problem with the time and process to collect it. “We need when we get here to collect our monies in a timely manner,” she said. She further explained that on some occasions when the bank their cheques are assigned to closes at 12:00hrs, they would have to pay another bank $500 to change their cheques when in dire need of the money.
Haynes, who has been visiting the court for a number of years to collect money for her son, recalled that the situation has been happening for a long time. She said that the situation is only getting worse and she had expected to see some form of improvement when the court moved from its Middle Street location.
“We don’t need to spend half day or lose half day pay to collect remittance for our children, we are not going to the doctor’s office,” she said. The angry mother noted that some mothers are coming to collect as little as $1,000 and if they have to spend two hours it’s not worth it. “We just need to collect our monies and go about our business,” she vented.
Haynes explained that management needs to better the time system. She also said that, if mothers are coming to uplift the monies, it means that children are left unattended in many cases.”Mothers need to get home and get back to their jobs,” the angry woman shouted.
She claimed that the staffers are very unprofessional and that some of them have an “attitude”. “Sometime I feel like I have to beg them to serve me,” she added.
Similarly, another mother of three who has been collecting money for the past ten years claimed that mothers would be left sitting outside for hours on the benches with nobody to attend to them. “We have to wait till they look dem face in the mirror, yuh no ‘rouche’ up dem face and thing before they look after us,” she stated.
The mothers hope by highlighting the problem better systems will be implemented for other mothers in the near future. She said that sometimes it would take at least two days to get the cash after going through the excruciating process. She explained that the office opens at 08:30hrs and closes for lunch at 11:30hrs promptly. “If we don’t get through with the cheque by time dem ready fuh guh pun lunch, we have to wait till they start back at 01:30hrs, this is a real headache when de day come man,” she said. The mother claimed that the employees are extremely slow at executing their duties and they would stop to talk their own story with fellow colleagues while attending to them.
They are blaming the everyday chaos on bad management. Some of the mothers claimed that staffers would usually come to work late and take up to two hours to write up their cheques.
These mothers described the situation as frustrating and tiresome and are now calling on the relevant authorities to look into the situation.