Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called for the clo­sure of bars and for cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among busi­ness­es to lim­it large gath­er­ings to pre­vent the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), en­ter­tain­ment and leisure busi­ness­es in Ch­agua­nas and Port-of-Spain have be­gun to com­ply.

“We took a de­ci­sion to close to­day un­til fur­ther no­tice..it wasn’t easy but at the end of the day it has to be done,” di­rec­tor of Rise Up along Rod­ney Road in Ch­agua­nas told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day dur­ing a tour of es­tab­lish­ments in Cen­tral and North Trinidad.

Oth­ers such as Andy’s Bar along the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah road were par­tial­ly opened.

“I just opened the par­lour side of it to ac­com­mo­date for the vil­lagers who work­ing, buy­ing lit­tle soft drinks, cokes what­ev­er,” own­er Bhag­wan­deen Mans­ingh said.

Es­tab­lish­ments such as Wood­ford Cafe at Price Plaza, Wing Hua and Kai Mi on the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road al­so had signs up in­di­cat­ing on­ly take out or­ders were be­ing per­mit­ted.

Sim­i­lar­ly, man­ag­er of Frankies on Ari­api­ta Av­enue Glen Di­az said his es­tab­lish­ment was on­ly al­low­ing cus­tomers to pur­chase take­out.

“We have to com­ply. It’s not some­thing that’s against the busi­ness sec­tor. It’s noth­ing against you per­son­al­ly. It’s what it is. It’s a virus and we need to get con­trol of it,” he said.

Di­az al­so in­di­cat­ed they in­tend to be­gin do­ing de­liv­er­ies as well to fur­ther min­imise the risks.

The Five Star Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Club casi­no at Price Plaza was al­so closed with a sign on its door stat­ing it was done “in ac­cor­dance with Gov­ern­ment guide­lines to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus.”

How­ev­er, the Roy­al Princess Casi­no re­mained open. Asked about their de­ci­sion, the man­ag­er told Guardian Me­dia they im­ple­ment­ed pro­to­cols to pro­tect against the virus such as lim­it­ing the num­ber of pa­trons al­lowed in­side at once to less than 25 and reg­u­lar san­i­ta­tion of their ma­chines.

Movi­eTowne al­so in­di­cat­ed in a re­lease yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed all their cin­e­mas would be closed from March 18 and would re­open on April 1 “pend­ing any fur­ther de­vel­op­ments.”

“As a re­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen we must make the lives, health and safe­ty of our loy­al pa­trons, staff and com­mu­ni­ty our top pri­or­i­ty,” the state­ment read.

Some ven­dors at the Ch­agua­nas mar­ket were ob­served tak­ing mea­sures to pro­tect them­selves and cus­tomers. Some were seen wear­ing gloves and an­oth­er was seen san­i­tiz­ing their counter.

“We just mak­ing sure every­thing’s clean, every­thing’s san­i­tized and every­body’s com­fort­able when they’re buy­ing,” ven­dor Cait­lan Lutch­man said.

On Mon­day Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­quest­ed that bars re­main closed in or­der to pre­vent peo­ple from gath­er­ing in large groups and spread­ing the COVID-19.

He said restau­rants weren’t be­ing asked to close but curb­side ser­vice over in-house din­ing would be prefer­able since in-house din­ing caus­es con­gre­gat­ing which in­creas­es trans­mis­sion spread. “This is for a short time ... we’re aim­ing to cre­ate a se­mi-ster­ile en­vi­ron­ment, so don’t make it dif­fi­cult by con­gre­gat­ing.”

The Prime Min­is­ter and his min­is­ters all stressed that cit­i­zens should avoid con­gre­ga­tions of more than 25 peo­ple.

The Gov­ern­ment is yet to the nec­es­sary mea­sures to make these ini­tia­tives law­ful­ly en­force­able.