The pri­vate sec­tor - in­clud­ing busi­ness­man Pe­ter George - has had a “Come to Je­sus “ mo­ment with Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued re­stric­tions on restau­rants, bars and eater­ies.

UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John in­di­cat­ed this in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2021 Bud­get.

John not­ed that George said the Prime Min­is­ter didn’t have the courage to make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions. But she said, “we” should have known how the PNM Gov­ern­ment - which closed down Petrotrin - re­al­ly was.

Ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of be­ing wicked and vi­cious, she said they didn’t un­der­stand peo­ple were suf­fer­ing es­pe­cial­ly in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try where she said there are many poor work­ers and sin­gle moth­ers.

John said peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go can work very hard with an ob­jec­tive and prop­er man­age­ment.

But she warned that a per­fect storm is com­ing due to the num­ber of places closed and work­ers be­ing out.

John added, “Does Gov­ern­ment feel peo­ple can wait two more weeks? What in­for­ma­tion will be dif­fer­ent then? “

She said the virus “isn’t go­ing any­where and one had to un­der­stand the new nor­mal and how to op­er­ate.”

“But in To­ba­go, we have a say­ing: mon­key know which tree to climb, he say ‘cool breeze’, one day is po­lice, next day is thief.”

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Maria Dil­lon-Re­my who spoke af­ter, said the elec­tions are over and every­one should take off their par­ty hats.

She said she’d been hear­ing one po­lit­i­cal side ac­cus­ing the oth­er of cor­rup­tion and the oth­er side say­ing every­thing is “a rose gar­den”.

Dil­lon-Re­my knocked UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark for say­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad had made the wrong choice in elec­tions.

She said the pop­u­la­tion had made their choice, “Let’s get on with the job.”

She said the COVID virus didn’t wear red or yel­low.

She al­so told the UNC that putting lap­tops in schools isn’t a plan.

Dil­lon- Re­my who com­mend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter for its tough de­ci­sions in the last term, ad­vised Gov­ern­ment to spell out its plans to en­sure that the pub­lic buys in­to it.

She said lead­er­ship has to be de­vel­oped in this coun­try and it should be pur­pose-dri­ven, prin­ci­ple cen­tred and val­ue bound - peo­ple who knew the pur­pose is to serve peo­ple with fair­ness and jus­tice,

She said the COVID virus will in­volve re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for self, coun­try and com­mu­ni­ty. She pro­posed sys­tems in To­ba­go where peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties could re­lay in­for­ma­tion on those who have COVID-19 speed­i­ly to au­thor­i­ties, rather than use the hot­line ser­vices.

Dil­lon -Re­my al­so rec­om­mend­ed a main­te­nance sys­tem for the new fer­ries which are to ar­rive soon.

She added To­ba­go busi­ness peo­ple are look­ing out to see what the cost of trans­port will be.

And Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor and Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell agreed with Dil­lon-Re­my that elec­tions are over.

He said PNM is the Gov­ern­ment and UNC would be in Op­po­si­tion a very long time.

Mitchell de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment against busi­ness sec­tor crit­i­cisms on the COVID-19 clo­sures.

He said Gov­ern­ment had to plan every day to deal with the chang­ing is­sues, “This is not the time for a five-day week­end.”

Mitchell said he had a slice of piz­za last week­end from Bu­zo- a place Pe­ter George owns.

He urged peo­ple to con­sid­er their chances of get­ting ill when they think about want­i­ng a rum and coke or to weigh whether a $10 beer was worth the $10,000 cost for a fu­ner­al.

He al­so slammed John’s state­ments, say­ing while at the HDC - where she served un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment - he had found three peo­ple were award­ed huge con­tracts with­out ten­ders be­ing done.