Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Hair­dressers, beau­ty tech­ni­cians, spa op­er­a­tors and bar­bers, among oth­er pro­fes­sion­als, will be re­turn­ing to work to­day, as an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at Sat­ur­day’s me­dia brief­ing.

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of the re­open­ing of his shop, bar­ber Keyv Young of Q-Styler Bar­ber­ing and Skin­care, in Barataria, was one of many peo­ple who spent yes­ter­day sani­tis­ing and clean­ing their of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, the last two months of clo­sure have been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult.

“I wish you could see un­der my shirt right now. My pores are ris­ing. I’m ex­cit­ed. I am look­ing for­ward to serv­ing my clients,” a vis­i­bly-ex­cit­ed Young said.

He added: “Our clients have been book­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly on our book­ing page, which is fan­tas­tic. It’s good to know that we were missed.”

While the an­tic­i­pa­tion builds, how­ev­er, Young has some is­sues to ad­dress.

Closed for two months, some bills had to be cut, he said, while he’s still ow­ing on oth­ers.

“That has been a chal­lenge all in it­self, so much so that I’m still hav­ing to deal with pay­ing those bills be­cause some of these ser­vice providers aren’t as ac­com­mo­dat­ing as I would have hoped,” he lament­ed.

Ce­leste Thomas, the own­er of Melanin Mag­ic, a small make­up ser­vices busi­ness, nev­er imag­ined she would have had to wait two months to brush up a client’s face again.

She ad­mit­ted a lack of funds took a toll on her busi­ness and her men­tal state but used the time at home to step up her mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

“I start­ed do­ing more lives, and in­ter­act­ing more with clients on so­cial me­dia, just to keep them there. To keep their in­ter­est,” Thomas said.

Asked what her re­ac­tion was to the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day, she laughed and said jok­ing­ly that,” It was just as good as hear­ing that KFC is go­ing to be re-opened.”

“It was a re­lief. It was an ease. It was a re­as­sur­ance that you can go back to mak­ing mon­ey and do­ing this with­out hav­ing that re­straint,” she added.

Un­like Young and Thomas, Crysande Hochst is not over­ly-moved by to­day’s re­open­ing.

For the own­er of Crysande’s Spa and Make­up Stu­dios Lim­it­ed, the dam­age to her fi­nances, and by ex­ten­sion, her busi­ness has been done.

“I’m glad it’s open, but it’s not all smiles. All the mon­ey peo­ple had to bor­row, beg and steal has to be paid back, so I’ll have to see how it goes,” she lament­ed.

In the two months closed, her phone was dis­con­nect­ed, while she was near­ly forced to give up her ve­hi­cle.

“Chal­leng­ing is an un­der­state­ment. My moth­er had to go in­to her pen­sion mon­ey to get $7,200 for me to keep my car,” she said.

“My moth­er, who is a pen­sion­er, is al­so bring­ing gro­ceries for me and my 8-month-old daugh­ter right now. That is my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” Hochst added.

Her suf­fer­ing though, Hochst claimed, pales in com­par­i­son to the suf­fer­ing of oth­er peo­ple she knows.

Last month, a mem­ber of her busi­ness’s Face­book group, post­ed a plea for help, say­ing her fam­i­ly was sur­viv­ing off eat­ing man­goes.

That plea was fol­lowed by dozens of oth­ers.

Her busi­ness group turned quick­ly in­to a hub, pri­mar­i­ly fo­cused on of­fer­ing as­sis­tance to those in need.

“I raised mon­ey when an in­ter­net com­pa­ny was dis­con­nect­ing peo­ple. We raised mon­ey in my group to pay a woman’s bill be­cause she was do­ing on­line school for her 10-year-old and she need­ed the in­ter­net,” she said.

The so­cial grants, she claimed, have not been get­ting to those most in need.

She ap­plied but re­ceived noth­ing.

Her eight em­ploy­ees, now down to two, ap­plied but al­so re­ceived noth­ing.

In April, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment set aside $400 mil­lion for so­cial grant pay­ments for April, May and June.

On June 6 he tweet­ed that 41,000 grants have been dis­trib­uted at a cost of $70 mil­lion.