The own­er of a pop­u­lar whole­sale and dis­count store in To­ba­go has writ­ten to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young over be­ing threat­ened by po­lice to close his busi­ness un­der on­go­ing COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Phillip Al­man­doz, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Miles Al­man­doz and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, of Wil­son Road in Scar­bor­ough, made the com­plaint in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to Young, ear­li­er this morn­ing.

"We are writ­ing to you as line Min­is­ter with au­thor­i­ty over the TTPS so that they may cease and de­sist from their planned quixot­ic pur­suit of this in­ten­tion to close down our client's busi­ness," at­tor­ney Mar­tin George said in the let­ter.

George called for a speedy re­sponse as he not­ed that his client ser­vices a large num­ber of To­bagoians.

"We wish to point out the ur­gency of this mat­ter with this be­ing a long week­end and with it al­so be­ing the East­er week­end, it is a par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial time for To­bag­o­ni­ans, who will need their es­sen­tial sup­plies from our client's busi­ness, notwith­stand­ing the strin­gent cir­cum­stances at present," George said.

George said that his client de­cid­ed to take the ac­tion af­ter he (Al­man­doz) was con­tact­ed by po­lice on Thurs­day and ad­vised to shut down his busi­ness while the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions stay in force at least un­til April 30.

In the let­ter, George not­ed that Al­man­doz's busi­ness, which holds a Spir­it Gro­cer's Li­cence, is a ma­jor dis­trib­u­tor of al­co­holic and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages, house­hold and clean­ing prod­ucts.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that a large seg­ment of the busi­ness deals with the sup­ply of non-al­co­holic drinks to nu­mer­ous gro­ceries, mi­ni-marts and cor­ner stores across the is­land.

While George ac­knowl­edged that Young had stat­ed that "liquor marts" are not to be con­sid­ered es­sen­tial busi­ness­es un­der the reg­u­la­tions, he not­ed that his client's busi­ness could not be clas­si­fied as such.

"In light of same, Miles Al­man­doz and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has re­mained op­er­a­tional and in­tends, re­spect­ful­ly, to con­tin­ue to re­main op­er­a­tional, and the es­tab­lish­ment con­tin­ues to make ex­ten­sive ef­forts to meet the in­creased de­mand for ba­sic goods, by sup­ply­ing con­sumers on a dai­ly ba­sis with es­sen­tial com­modi­ties and by ap­ply­ing the nec­es­sary mea­sures of so­cial dis­tanc­ing and strin­gent Health and Safe­ty prac­tices for staff and cus­tomers alike," George said.

George claimed that the busi­ness was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to To­bag­o­ni­ans as they do not have ac­cess to large whole­sale shop­ping wide­ly avail­able in Trinidad. 

"To­bag­o­ni­ans would, there­fore, feel par­tic­u­lar­ly hard-done-by and dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, if be­tween now and the end of the month, they were de­prived of their one "dis­count store" out­let sup­ply­ing them with the items list­ed above, in bulk and at whole­sale vol­umes and whole­sale prices, as their "whole­sale store" for stock­ing their mi­ni-marts, su­per­mar­kets, cor­ner shops, and their homes," George said.

He al­so claimed that the clo­sure would af­fect the To­ba­go econ­o­my as the busi­ness em­ploys a large num­ber of peo­ple.

George warned that if the po­lice of­fi­cers con­tin­ued with the plan, they would be act­ing il­le­gal­ly, and he would have to file a law­suit seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for their ac­tion and over any loss in busi­ness his client in­curs dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

While George not­ed that he was seek­ing Young's in­ter­ven­tion, he copied Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on the let­ter so that he could weigh in and ad­vise his of­fi­cers ac­cord­ing­ly.

George had not re­ceived a re­sponse, up to a short while ago.

The ac­tion tak­en by the com­pa­ny comes days af­ter Goutam Singh, of Singh's Liquor Mart lo­cat­ed along Bournes Road in St James, filed a law­suit and an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter he was forced to close his busi­ness this week.

In his court fil­ings, Singh's lawyers have con­tend­ed that while the reg­u­la­tions pre­vent hold­ers of a spir­it re­tail­er li­cence, wine re­tail­er li­cence, restau­rant li­cence or wine mer­chant's li­cence from open­ing their premis­es for the du­ra­tion of the reg­u­la­tions, it does not cov­er hold­ers of a spir­it gro­cer's li­cence such as Singh.

When the law­suit came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran via video con­fer­enc­ing, on Thurs­day, State at­tor­neys asked for time to re­spond to it.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing ear­ly next week.

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Sto­ry by DEREK ACHONG