Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter just one week of be­ing al­lowed to re­open, bars are now hav­ing their hours of op­er­a­tion re­duced fol­low­ing what of­fi­cials called “dis­turb­ing” re­ports of mass con­gre­ga­tions dur­ing a time when the coun­try is try­ing to main­tain gains made in its fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Speak­ing at a Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, both the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young ex­pressed con­cern over the re­ports they have re­ceived; es­pe­cial­ly in the days lead­ing up to the week­end.

As a re­sult, Young said bars will now on­ly be al­lowed to op­er­ate with­in the hours of 8 am and 8 pm un­der the new reg­u­la­tion which was ex­pect­ed to be pub­lished on Mon­day.

He sug­gest­ed bars im­ple­ment and en­force a “last call” sys­tem at 7.30 pm to en­sure clo­sure at 8 pm.

He cau­tioned that this is on­ly the first step in rolling back the re­open­ing for that sec­tor and warns that the po­lice will be keep­ing a clos­er eye on these es­tab­lish­ments.

“A warn­ing was giv­en over the week­end by the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh. We have tak­en this step to give an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty­not on­ly to the bar own­ers and op­er­a­tors but more so the pa­trons and the per­sons go­ing to the bars and con­gre­gat­ing on the roads, pave­ments out­side of the bars,” he said.

He said if bars do not com­ply with the stip­u­lat­ed max­i­mum of 25 pa­trons or the open­ing hours, they will face the $50,000 fine and six months im­pris­on­ment for breach­ing the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

They can al­so be closed if they don’t ad­here to the guide­lines set out by the Min­istry of Health, he al­so not­ed.

Restau­rants with bar li­cens­es won’t be af­fect­ed by the change and can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­til 10 pm. How­ev­er, Young cau­tioned that they aren’t ex­empt­ed from sim­i­lar ac­tion if the guide­lines aren’t ad­hered to.

“Right now we’re al­low­ing you to con­tin­ue to serve un­til 10 pm but if we see a con­tin­u­a­tion of be­hav­iour or the be­hav­iour move to these restau­rants who have bars in­side, we would al­so roll back on that cat­e­go­ry of per­sons,” he cau­tioned.

And al­though he did not ex­plain in any cer­tain terms what the next step would be should these warn­ings go un­heed­ed, he said: “The gov­ern­ment would not hes­i­tate to do what is nec­es­sary based on the ad­vice we get from our med­ical ex­perts.”

Young com­mend­ed the de­ci­sion tak­en by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bev­er­age and Al­co­hol Al­liance (TTBAA) to with­hold the sup­ply of al­co­holic bev­er­ages to bars that don’t com­ply with the guide­lines.