Gail Alexan­der

There is now a ban by some su­per­mar­kets on cus­tomers who are not wear­ing face masks to pro­tect against COVID-19.

But while some su­per­mar­kets are turn­ing away such cus­tomers, masks are in short sup­ply due to the COVID-19 cri­sis and masks which Gov­ern­ment promised to dis­trib­ute haven’t ma­te­ri­alised yet.

The de­vel­op­ment has arisen af­ter the Health Min­istry’s ad­vice last Sun­day to mem­bers of the pub­lic to wear masks when go­ing out­doors to con­duct es­sen­tial busi­ness to curb COVID-19 spread. This was based on the rec­om­men­da­tion by the US’ Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) to Amer­i­cans use masks.

But the wear­ing of masks wasn’t stat­ed as T&T law or placed in Pub­lic Health or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions on the COVID cri­sis.

Af­ter Health con­veyed the rec­om­men­da­tion, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced her teams would make masks to dis­trib­ute. Gov­ern­ment then sub­se­quent­ly said it would al­so be dis­trib­ut­ing masks by the end of this week.

On Tues­day, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry stat­ed that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions’ Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units would as­sist the Health Min­istry in mask dis­tri­b­u­tion. But yes­ter­day sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions said they had no word on masks and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein said he was await­ing word from the Health Min­istry on the mat­ter.

The avail­abil­i­ty of masks be­came even more im­por­tant af­ter the Su­per­mar­kets’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T this week is­sued a no­tice that cus­tomers were “strong­ly ad­vised” to wear masks.

Yes­ter­day, a cus­tomer at Massy Stores, Wood­brook, was told by a male em­ploy­ee at the en­trance that they couldn’t en­ter the gro­cery with­out a mask. A se­cu­ri­ty staffer stood by. A fe­male em­ploy­ee who an­swered Massy’s phone con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that cus­tomers need masks to gain en­tries to their su­per­mar­kets. She said Massy’s head of­fice is­sued the di­rec­tive.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er large su­per­mar­ket chain said they didn’t have manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing since cus­tomers were al­ready large­ly us­ing masks. But they said sani­tis­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing were be­ing en­forced and coun­ters are con­stant­ly be­ing cleaned af­ter goods were cashed. Sev­er­al small­er gro­ceries said they al­so weren’t de­bar­ring mask-less cus­tomers but in­sist­ed on hand wash­ing/sani­tis­ing be­fore en­try and strict so­cial dis­tanc­ing in­side.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Su­per­mar­kets’ As­so­ci­a­tion head Ra­jiv Diptee said they took its po­si­tion at a re­cent meet­ing with mem­bers, in­clud­ing Massy. He said the need to curb COVID-19 spread was un­der­stood but SATT didn’t state mask-less cus­tomers should be barred from en­try to su­per­mar­kets. He, how­ev­er, recog­nised some own­ers want­ed to pro­tect their places.

He said he’d spo­ken to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who’d un­der­stood that gov­ern­ment-dis­trib­uted masks weren’t avail­able yet. Diptee said SATT ap­proved of cloth or hand­ker­chief masks but frowned on peo­ple wear­ing hats or sun “shades” un­less they had a re­li­gious or med­ical rea­son.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said yes­ter­day that he didn’t know when his cor­po­ra­tion would get masks to dis­trib­ute. While he com­mis­er­at­ed with those who need­ed to buy food and didn’t have masks, he said he un­der­stood why su­per­mar­kets may want to pro­tect their area.

He said he be­lieves masks may ar­rive next week.

“They may have to source ma­te­r­i­al, elas­tic, thread to get it done by peo­ple mak­ing this. If you have to fur­nish all T&T, you’ll need a mil­lion. There­fore, it means they’ll have to give high-den­si­ty ar­eas first or peo­ple may get via their MP. But you can make a mask at home,” Mar­tinez said.

Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine added, “Since the an­nounce­ment peo­ple are call­ing me non­stop. To­day (yes­ter­day), I got over 100 calls but we’ve heard noth­ing.”

Tu­na­puna coun­cil­lor Paul Lea­cock al­so said no­body’s yet in­di­cat­ed when masks would ar­rive.

MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who dis­trib­uted to el­der­ly con­stituents yes­ter­day, said it was un­just for su­per­mar­kets to ban cus­tomers who lacked masks.

“We’d rec­om­mend­ed mask-wear­ing. Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly ad­vised on it. But they didn’t make it law as a re­quire­ment, or part of COVID reg­u­la­tions,” Mooni­lal said.

“Gov­ern­ment hasn’t pro­vid­ed masks and stock is large­ly sold out. To­day, we clap for law en­force­ment and health work­ers but we on­ly have a slap for Gov­ern­ment, which has made a mess by urg­ing mask-wear­ing late, promis­ing masks then not de­liv­er­ing. So now peo­ple get­ting squeezed.”

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the wear­ing of masks wasn’t in law or the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance. But he said if busi­ness­es chose, they could pre­vent per­sons with­out masks from en­ter­ing their prop­er­ty.

“Im­pro­vise - use a rag or ker­chief,” he ad­vised the pub­lic.

On su­per­mar­ket cus­tomers’ dilem­ma, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is al­so sug­gest­ed,”... Use a scarf or ban­dana to cov­er your mouth and nos­trils.”

FEEL starts Govt

dis­tri­b­u­tion soon

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says Gov­ern­ment’s masks dis­tri­b­u­tion will be han­dled by the Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment of LIFE (FEEL).

The ac­tiv­i­ty was con­firmed by FEEL CEO Ele­na Vil­lafana Sylvester via a me­dia re­lease.

“FEEL is a reg­is­tered char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion that works to as­sist dis­ad­van­taged per­sons across Trinidad and To­ba­go, through a net­work of over 100 non-­prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions. In this in­stance, FEEL’s role in­volves the col­lec­tion of reusable masks from lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers who have come for­ward in sup­port of this ini­tia­tive,” Vil­lafana Sylvester said.

She said FEEL will dis­trib­ute the masks in ac­cor­dance with guide­lines from the Gov­ern­ment and through a mix of strate­gies in­clud­ing mo­bil­i­sa­tion of its net­work.

“FEEL has em­barked on the lo­gis­tics to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the dis­tri­b­u­tion process and will no­ti­fy the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty via the lo­cal me­dia and so­cial me­dia on the de­tails for col­lec­tion of cloth masks by house­holds in each com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

And while re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions await Gov­ern­ment’s masks, UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dev Tan­coo said their mask dis­tri­b­u­tion be­gan on Tues­day and at least 300 more will be dis­trib­uted to­day.