While many government institutions have continued the strict enforcement of dress codes, one agency head has taken the decision to be flexible with its application.
“We took the decision to, I don’t know if you would call it relax the dress code, but to accept persons… once they passed the security requirements,” Commissioner of the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GL&SC) Trevor Benn explained to Stabroek News back in May of this year.
Benn, at the time, had only taken up his new post as Commissioner of the GL&SC a few days prior but felt it necessary to address the stringent dress code as there had been several complaints by persons of being denied entry to the agency.
“Most of the persons who are coming here are coming to transact business, pay their leases and so on… we must remember too that they are mostly farmers and some would have travelled long distances,” he said.
“For us to then turn them back because they have on an armless shirt, or are in slippers or rain boots would be us denying ourselves that transaction for which they came …we are not going to refuse money. We are right now short strapped for money, so it would be foolish…,” he added.
Benn, who worked with the United Nations Development Programme here for years and has travelled the world extensively, referred to other Caribbean countries where persons are permitted to enter government buildings in armless shirts or dresses or, sometimes, flip flops on their feet.
“You have to remember this is a tropical country and with the weather here, it is understandable that persons would want to wear cool clothing…,” he pointed out.
However, over at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), the application of the dress code, which prohibits entry for wearing, among other things, torn clothing, continues.
Security personnel recently barred one woman from entering because she was wearing a pair of vintage jeans, which had two cuts at the knee caps, while a senior citizen was told he could not enter with his slippers, although he explained that that there was a medical problem with one of his toes.
“De rules is the rules and you can’t blame me,” a female security guard told this newspapers.
The dress codes for all government buildings prohibit, among other modes of dress, armless clothing, hair curlers, slippers, short pants in the case of both men and women, tights and short skirts.
On Wednesday, Guyana Chronicle Columnist Akola Thompson was denied entry to the National Communications Network (NCN) compound because she was clad in an armless dress. The dress code, however, did not list armless clothing as a prohibition.
Thompson subsequently took to social media and blasted the enforcement of dress codes across the country by many government organizations.
“Even if no substantial changes are being made, rules such as the dress code implemented in so many buildings across Guyana should continue to be challenged. Today, forgetting once again that we are a country still trapped with a colonial mentality when even our colonizers have grown from that, I went to the National Communications Network (NCN) for an interview in a dress that dared not have sleeves,” Thompson related.
“There I was met with two guards, one of whom told me that I could not enter the premises as my dress had no sleeves… I pointed out to him that the sign he was so diligently referring to made absolutely no mention of armless clothes not being permitted. The other guard after checking the sign told him that I was right, but the guard probably feeling as if I threatened the small modicum of power he possessed refused to hear reason and insisted I not go in,” she added.
She said that the man remained adamant that she would not enter and it was not until an NCN staffer offered a blazer to her that she was given permission to enter.
Thompson called on persons, especially women, to stand up for the change they want and not passively and secretly bemoan the enforcement of dress codes.
“I await the day with glee when a government agency will begin turning away Sandra Granger or female parliamentarians from entering buildings just because they dared bare their arms to the public. Maybe only then will women earn the right to bare arms in public venues and not be condescendingly told that those are the rules because by then we would know that often, rules need changing,” she stated.
