Rishard Khan &

Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Some man­u­fac­tur­ers re­port­ed a slow start to the sec­ond phase of T&T’s COVID-19 re­open­ing pro­gramme yes­ter­day but oth­er sec­tors said they were ex­treme­ly busy.

Ad­vance Foam Lim­it­ed CEO and chair­man Travis Ali told Guardian Me­dia the com­pa­ny, one of the largest mat­tress man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters in the Caribbean re­gion, had been try­ing to fill ex­port or­ders re­ceived dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od.

“We had ex­port or­ders out­stand­ing...we’re rush­ing right now to make these ex­port or­ders. We have some ho­tel or­ders we are try­ing to rush in­to the sys­tem in the next week and a half and get some of the ex­ports out of the way,” Ali said.

He said they had lost some re­gion­al mar­ket share due to the dif­fer­ences in COVID poli­cies in the var­i­ous coun­tries. He said while they were un­able to op­er­ate in T&T due to lock­down mea­sures, some of the com­pa­ny’s long­stand­ing cus­tomers in oth­er coun­tries with less strin­gent mea­sures turned to their com­peti­tors. How­ev­er, he es­ti­mat­ed that ex­ports make up 40 per cent of their sales.

“We’re hope­ful that the re­tail sec­tor in Trinidad opens very soon be­cause open­ing a man­u­fac­tur­er and with­out their cus­tomers opened, you can imag­ine how that goes ... run­ning a fac­to­ry with 40 to 45 per cent out­put is very in­ef­fi­cient and it be­comes cost­ly - al­most to the point you lose mon­ey,” Ali said.

How­ev­er, he was grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­open and that Gov­ern­ment had heed­ed calls to re­open the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

Al­so on a slow yes­ter­day was Roof Sys­tems Lim­it­ed in Ari­ma. Dur­ing a vis­it to the fac­to­ry, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er Joel Sim­mons told Guardian Me­dia: “Things are a lit­tle slow­er than we nor­mal­ly have it on a dai­ly ba­sis but that doesn’t stop us from do­ing what we have to do.”

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that work­ers would need to make ad­just­ments to their rou­tines but said, “It’s a small price we have to pay mov­ing for­ward af­ter COVID.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed both fac­to­ries yes­ter­day, pro­to­cols were in place to pro­tect work­ers and cus­tomers from COVID-19, in­clud­ing san­i­ta­tion sta­tions, manda­to­ry wear­ing of masks and tem­per­a­ture checks up­on en­try.

But for au­to parts deal­ers, the de­mand for new and used parts was very high.

At Bam­boo Boule­vard in Val­sayn yes­ter­day, cus­tomers lined up try­ing to get the best deals on much-need­ed parts for their ve­hi­cles. One such cus­tomer said his car had been parked up for the last two months as there were no deal­ers open.

“It has been hard be­cause I was wait­ing for the past two months at least, since the be­gin­ning of the lock­down,” he said.

Wear­ing a face mask in the swel­ter­ing 34.1-de­gree heat, he tried in vain to get his car to start. A me­chan­ic he brought along with him sweat­ed pro­fuse­ly as he re­moved and re­placed a worn out part from the en­gine.

Bick’s Au­to Parts man­ag­er Shaun Mo­hammed said there was a large, con­tin­u­ous in­flux of cus­tomers at their ten out­lets.

“The de­mand for parts has been ex­treme­ly, ex­treme­ly high. I don’t think we had enough parts to sat­is­fy some cus­tomers to­day be­cause of the amount of cus­tomers we had this morn­ing,” Mo­hammed said.

He said dur­ing the lock­down about 20 con­tain­ers of parts or­dered from abroad land­ed in Trinidad, so em­ploy­ees were busy sort­ing them.

Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny was do­ing its best to en­cour­age cus­tomers to wear their face masks and use hand wash­ing sta­tions be­fore en­ter­ing out­lets. He said be­cause of the high de­mand, Bick’s was able to keep all its staff.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al store­fronts away, the own­er of Mo­hammed’s For­eign Used Parts said the day was off to a slow start. There was no rush at his busi­ness and they tried their best to en­sure safe­ty pro­to­cols were kept. How­ev­er, cou­pled with the over­head ex­pens­es need­ed to be met, even dur­ing the lock­down, he said he was strug­gling to get back on his feet.

Laun­dro­mats were al­so al­lowed to re­open yes­ter­day.

But at DJ’s Self Serve Coin Laun­dry on the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille, cus­tomers were few and far apart.

“It’s been very slow so far. We have mea­sures in place for so­cial dis­tanc­ing where we don’t want more than five peo­ple in at once but it’s off to a very slow start,” a di­rec­tor who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Carl­ton said.

He said dur­ing the re­stric­tions, the com­pa­ny turned off its elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sup­plies to keep over­head costs low. He said oth­er over­head costs were still ac­cu­mu­lat­ing though and staff was al­so be­ing paid.

The sec­ond phase of the re­open­ing was moved up from next week by the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter has it­er­at­ed that the phas­es put forth in the re­cov­ery plan are sub­ject to change and can be moved up if the re­sults of com­mu­ni­ty tests are favourable.