A Timberlea senior said she didn’t feel safe when she recently renewed her driver’s licence at Access Nova Scotia in Bayers Lake.
The woman, 85, said she didn’t see any seats being wiped down in the hour and a half she was there, despite a stream of people sitting down, leaving and then having that seat immediately occupied.
Because the first kiosk the woman was sent to didn’t have a camera to take her driver's licence photo, she had to sit down twice in chairs with armrests.
“I’m just wondering how that can be because you’re sitting in the seat the guy just moved his butt from and you put yours right back in,” said the senior, who didn’t want her name used.
“It didn’t make me feel safe at all because I’ve been staying home almost 100 per cent because of my age and so on, even though I’m pretty active. . . . I try to be really careful (about COVID-19) and then I sit twice in seats that were occupied all day long by many, many, many people.”
The woman noted that tables at restaurants must be cleaned in between customers and would face closure if they didn’t meet public health standards.
An Access Nova Scotia spokesman said the centres are sanitized twice a day per public health guidelines. High-touch areas such as counters are cleaned after every client.
“In addition to this, we require hand sanitation upon entry, mandatory non-medical masks, social distancing within centres, allow clients to wait in their car and be texted when it is their time to be served, and have added plexiglass at all of our counters,” said Blaise Theriault in an email.
Some online services can be done from home, he added, including a new online driver licence renewal service. A full list of online services can be found at: https://novascotia.ca/access-services-online/.
The senior confirmed that she was asked the standard questions such as whether she recently had been out of the country and that hand sanitizer was available at the door. She also said two chairs are left empty between the occupied chairs, which she was happy to see.
