Jesse Ramdeo

The coun­try has be­gun inch­ing clos­er to the re­open­ing of some sec­tors to vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, and stake­hold­ers are await­ing de­tails from the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs on how the pro­posed safe zones will work.

How­ev­er, de­spite the ab­sence of spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Health and Fit­ness gyms, Chelsea Ram­nar­ine-Singh, is putting in the work to en­sure a safe re­open­ing on Oc­to­ber 11.

Yesa­ter­day, Singh said mon­i­tor­ing cus­tomers to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty will be crit­i­cal to their op­er­a­tion.

“The re­cep­tion­ist at each of the Health and Fit­ness gyms will ask the mem­ber to present the vac­ci­na­tion cards and once it is de­ter­mined that they have been vac­ci­nat­ed and it’s been two weeks since their last shot, we will en­ter their names in a data­base to dif­fer­en­ti­ate who is vac­ci­nat­ed and who is un-vac­ci­nat­ed,” she said.

With six fa­cil­i­ties scat­tered across south Trinidad, Ram­nar­ine-Singh said em­ploy­ees will not be giv­en a free pass.

“Since we are at­tempt­ing to es­tab­lish a safe zone and al­low­ing vac­ci­nat­ed mem­bers to use the fa­cil­i­ties, it is on­ly ap­pro­pri­ate to al­low ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers in­to the gyms as well.”

She al­so plead­ed with the pub­lic not to break the rules, not­ing the pro­posed re­turn to op­er­a­tion for many sec­tors clas­si­fied as safe zones is a much-need­ed life­line to busi­ness.

“We are con­cerned that peo­ple will try to beat the sys­tem, but as busi­ness own­ers we can on­ly man­age that risk by re­quest­ing from the pub­lic their hon­esty and com­pli­ance so we can get back to a life of nor­mal­cy.”

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, where the an­nounce­ment was made that des­ig­nat­ed safe zones will be­come ac­ces­si­ble to peo­ple pre­sent­ing proof of their vac­ci­na­tion, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young warned that busi­ness own­ers and cus­tomers caught flout­ing the rules es­tab­lished will in­cur stiff penal­ties.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day con­tact­ed Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, who ad­vised the specifics on how safe zones will be po­liced were not yet ven­ti­lat­ed.

“Af­ter the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­ers fin­ish their dis­cus­sions, then we will plan our strat­e­gy to­geth­er with health of­fi­cers on how we man­age it, but un­til such time we have to wait and see what is said,” Ja­cob said.

At yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram ad­vised that dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter were ex­pect­ed to take place this week.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, we are work­ing out the op­er­a­tion de­tails re­gard­ing it and lat­er on in the week, pri­or to go­ing in­to that phase which is Oc­to­ber 11, fur­ther an­nounce­ments will be made,” Paras­ram said.

Ef­forts to con­tact At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for an up­date were un­suc­cess­ful.