Kali­fa Clyne

A cut in work­ing hours and a loss of in­come are some of the neg­a­tive ef­fects peo­ple who work and live in hot spots face be­cause the state of emer­gency. The state of emer­gency, de­clared just five days ago by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, calls for cit­i­zens to suf­fer some in­con­ve­niences for the good of the coun­try. While some em­ploy­ers have at­tempt­ed to be ac­com­mo­dat­ing to their em­ploy­ees, they ad­mit that their op­tions were lim­it­ed. The 9 pm to 5 am cur­few has re­sult­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in the in­come of taxi dri­vers, restau­rant work­ers, work­ers in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try and oth­er hourly-paid work­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to Patrice Bernard, the state of emer­gency was caus­ing a se­ri­ous de­crease in her in­come.

Bernard, a 28-year-old moth­er of two, of Ch­agua­nas, said the day af­ter the state of emer­gency was an­nounced her hours of work had been re­duced. "I work in a restau­rant and every­body now has to work a day­time shift and even though some of us work for eight hours, we have been sched­uled to take up to four days off in the week," she said. "I have a fam­i­ly to feed and I don't know how I am go­ing to do it if this lasts a lot longer. "It's worse for the peo­ple who have to go to school and can on­ly work nights be­cause now they can't work at all." A man­ag­er of a pop­u­lar cen­tral-based restau­rant said loss of in­come for em­ploy­ees was some­thing that could not be avoid­ed.

"Our open­ing hours have short­ened and so we are try­ing to di­vide the hours fair­ly for our em­ploy­ees," he said. "As for the em­ploy­ees who usu­al­ly on­ly work at night, there is re­al­ly noth­ing we can do." An­oth­er woman, Gillian Smit, said she at­tend­ed night class­es in Port-of-Spain and al­though her in­sti­tu­tion had made changes to fa­cil­i­tate the cur­few, it was still a has­sle for peo­ple who had fam­i­lies. "On top of the fact that we have to change our en­tire lives, the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened for peo­ple head­ing to the south of the coun­try from Port-of-Spain," she said. And while par­ty-go­ers may not be large­ly af­fect­ed by the lack of en­ter­tain­ment prospects in terms of events and par­ties, the peo­ple who re­ly on the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to make a liv­ing told a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

David Dun­can, a DJ who worked both on ra­dio and in par­ties, said the state of emer­gency was def­i­nite­ly af­fect­ing his in­come. "Par­ties and events have been can­celled and night clubs and lo­cal lim­ing spots have ad­just­ed their hours, so that means less in­come for or­gan­is­ers and busi­ness­es and def­i­nite­ly less mon­ey for DJ's who re­ly on these jobs to make an in­come," he said. Dun­can said at­tempts to ob­tain a cur­few per­mit was met with re­sis­tance from po­lice who, ac­cord­ing to him, said "me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment was not a high pri­or­i­ty." For the past four days, ra­dio shows have been bom­bard­ed with callers, from taxi dri­vers to fac­to­ry work­ers, who say that if the state of emer­gency was ex­tend­ed, they would be un­able to sup­port them­selves and their fam­i­lies.