Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are sat­is­fied that the mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed over the week­end by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley are a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Busi­ness lead­ers had called for new, cre­ative ap­proach­es to curb the COVID-19 spike. 

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “We found the an­nounce­ments made on Sat­ur­day by the Prime Min­is­ter and his team to be in keep­ing with the ideas that we were sug­gest­ing.”

“We find that it is en­cour­ag­ing to see that those who are man­ag­ing this cri­sis have their think­ing caps on and that we are mak­ing ad­just­ments in an ef­fort to try and get an im­proved re­sult.”

Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­chamTT) Ni­rad Tewarie al­so be­lieved it was a step to­wards more cre­ative so­lu­tions to end­ing the out­break.

How­ev­er, he said once that goal has been achieved there need to be cre­ative dis­cus­sions cen­tred around eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

“What we need to do is en­sure that once we are able to achieve this we are in a po­si­tion where we are look­ing to­ward re­cov­ery,” he said.

“What is go­ing to be re­quired is some cre­ative ap­proach­es and stim­u­lus. Those mea­sures and again not to be pre­scrip­tive, but we need to sit and dis­cuss how we can stim­u­late the econ­o­my in a mean­ing­ful way in the short-term and then plan for eco­nom­ic growth in the medi­um to long-term.”

Sat­ur­day’s an­nounce­ment that the gov­ern­ment was able to pro­cure ad­di­tion­al dos­es of Sinopharm vac­cines has al­so augered well with the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce. 

“The an­nounce­ment of ad­di­tion­al vac­cines will as­sist in re­duc­ing the lev­el of anx­i­ety among the pop­u­la­tion, as our rate of vac­ci­na­tion is rel­a­tive­ly low in com­par­i­son to some oth­er Caribbean coun­tries. It is heart­en­ing to see the im­prove­ments in the vac­ci­na­tion strat­e­gy to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the vac­cines,” a re­lease from the Cham­ber said. 

The Cham­ber’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gabriel Faria al­so not­ed that cre­ative so­lu­tions are need­ed to al­so ramp up the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

“This may re­quire out of the box think­ing, to­day we all have to look at in­no­v­a­tive ways to over­come what­ev­er road­blocks we en­counter. It may be al­so al­low­ing doc­tors to vac­ci­nate in their of­fices for their pa­tients so you spread the crowds. It may be train­ing the phar­ma­cists to give vac­cines. It may be fly­ing in per­sons from Cu­ba or an­oth­er coun­try that has the num­ber of Health care pro­fes­sion­als to sup­port a vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve,” he said.

He said the Cham­ber stands ready to as­sist the gov­ern­ment in any way nec­es­sary. 

“The fo­cus should not be on ex­plain­ing what we can’t do and why but how can we do what we need to...the pri­vate sec­tor has of­fered and the govt has the op­tion to lever­age the in­ge­nu­ity and out-of-the-box think­ing of suc­cess­ful pri­vate sec­tors lead­ers. Let’s do this to­geth­er for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.