The Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CAD) and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing aimed to en­hance con­sumer pro­tec­tion, stream­line com­plaint res­o­lu­tion and ad­vance dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy across the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a struc­tured frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the two agen­cies to ad­dress con­sumer is­sues in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tors.

Un­der the MOU, both or­gan­i­sa­tions would co­or­di­nate the re­ceipt, re­fer­ral, in­ves­ti­ga­tion and res­o­lu­tion of con­sumer com­plaints with the aim of re­duc­ing du­pli­ca­tion and im­prov­ing re­sponse times.

The agen­cies would al­so share com­plaint trends, reg­u­la­to­ry in­sights and oth­er non-con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion to help shape fu­ture con­sumer poli­cies and sup­port im­prove­ments with­in the sec­tor.

The agree­ment al­so places sig­nif­i­cant fo­cus on pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy as planned ini­tia­tives in­clude joint aware­ness cam­paigns, pub­lic ad­vi­sories, so­cial me­dia out­reach and con­sumer sur­veys de­signed to in­form cit­i­zens about their rights, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and avail­able chan­nels for re­dress.

"Launch­ing co-brand­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paigns, pub­lic ad­vi­sories, so­cial me­dia out­reach and joint sur­veys to em­pow­er con­sumers re­gard­ing their rights, oblig­a­tions and avail­able av­enues for re­dress," the re­lease ex­plained.

In ad­di­tion, CAD and TATT would col­lab­o­rate on work­shops and train­ing pro­grammes cov­er­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tions, com­plaint in­ves­ti­ga­tions and dis­pute res­o­lu­tion.

The Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism added the ini­tia­tive sup­ports T&T’s broad­er ef­forts to strength­en dig­i­tal gov­er­nance, im­prove reg­u­la­to­ry co­or­di­na­tion and build pub­lic con­fi­dence in na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

By com­bin­ing TATT’s tech­ni­cal reg­u­la­to­ry role with the con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy man­date of the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, the agen­cies aim to en­sure that de­vel­op­ments in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions are sup­port­ed by strong con­sumer safe­guards and ef­fec­tive mech­a­nisms for ad­dress­ing cus­tomer con­cerns.

The agree­ment was for­mal­ly ex­e­cut­ed by Abi­gail By­noe, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, and Kurleigh Prescod, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TATT.