Shal­iza Has­sanali

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud is ask­ing that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to amend the cur­few hours to fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness­es that op­er­ate at nights in the cap­i­tal city. Aboud said DO­MA did not want to make any re­quest of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry for an amend­ment of the cur­few hours if it will strate­gi­cal­ly af­fect the work of law en­force­ment agen­cies but, "per­haps con­sid­er­a­tion can be giv­en." In­stead of the 9 pm to 5 am im­posed cur­few, Aboud said af­fect­ed busi­ness­es were con­sid­er­ing that the cur­few be amend­ed to mid­night to 5 am. Aboud be­lieved that this would great­ly mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic im­pact that the state of emer­gency is hav­ing on busi­ness­es in Port-of-Spain.

The cap­i­tal has been list­ed as one of six hot spot zones de­clared by the Gov­ern­ment. In that re­gard, Aboud said rep­re­sen­ta­tion was made for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to per­haps con­sid­er amend­ing the cur­few. "We are ac­tu­al­ly re­ceiv­ing calls con­stant­ly from these peo­ple (busi­ness op­er­a­tors). The views which have been ex­pressed to us about this have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Stephen Cadiz.". Aboud ex­plained that for the past six days DO­MA has re­ceived a high vol­ume of feed­back from mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the down­town area and those on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal city.

He ex­plained that se­ri­ous con­cerns were ex­pressed by those who op­er­ate busi­ness­es af­ter 6 pm, in par­tic­u­lar the fast food out­lets, ho­tels and restau­rants which fall with­in the eight hour cur­few time. In down town Port-of-Spain, St James, and Wood­brook there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 restau­rants and fast food out­lets that are at risk, Aboud said. Some restau­rants have com­plained that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the state of emer­gency has caused a re­duc­tion in their cus­tomers, Aboud said. At the fast food out­lets, due to the fact that many of the em­ploy­ees come from far-flung ar­eas, those busi­ness­es have been clos­ing be­fore 7 pm in or­der to guar­an­tee that staff reach home safe­ly.

"This is hav­ing an ef­fect, as it must, on the in­come and earn­ings of these peo­ple." Asked how much loss­es busi­ness own­ers have in­curred and stand to lose in the com­ing days, Aboud said he was un­able to say. "I don't think we have the ca­pac­i­ty at this time to give a fig­ure." Aboud said mem­bers of the food ser­vice in­dus­try, as well as food dis­tri­b­u­tion and bev­er­age in­dus­tries have al­so vent­ed con­cern about the cur­tail­ment of in­come of staff. "There were al­so dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing mort­gage and rental pay­ments, which busi­ness op­er­a­tors of food es­tab­lish­ments must meet. We trust that land­lords and banks will take these fac­tors in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in try­ing to share the bur­den which has been im­posed by this cur­few."

In the ab­sence of Pe­ter Jack­son, the in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, for­mer pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Raj Jadoo said while many busi­ness­es have been com­plain­ing, he wel­comed the state of emer­gency. Jadoo, the own­er of Jadoo Trad­ing Ltd, felt this was the best de­ci­sion for the coun­try in light of the up­surge of crime and mur­ders in Ari­ma in the last few months, which had cit­i­zens un­easy and in a state of pan­ic. Bob­by Liu, own­er of Friend­ship Restau­rant on Queen Street in Ari­ma, not­ed that he has seen a dip in cus­tomers in the last week. "Busi­ness has been very slow. I am not mak­ing any mon­ey." Liu, usu­al­ly clos­es his restau­rant at 10 pm, but is now forced to close by 8 pm.