Re­lief spread across To­ba­go as View­port Su­per­mar­ket, lo­cat­ed in Scar­bor­ough and Canaan, re­opened its doors on Fri­day.

The su­per­mar­ket is one of two well-known To­ba­go gro­cery out­lets on the is­land.

The man­age­ment of the long-stand­ing and well-es­tab­lished gro­cery shut its doors on Thurs­day, March 19, cit­ing COVID-19 safe­ty con­cerns for staff and cus­tomers.

They asked for guide­lines from the au­thor­i­ties.

In a state­ment on so­cial me­dia on Thurs­day night, the man­age­ment said: “ We have been work­ing with the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment in this try­ing time.”

“Thus we in­tend to open for busi­ness...af­ter em­ploy­ing strin­gent san­i­tary mea­sures and with new pro­ce­dures in place to pro­tect every­one. This in­cludes the phased roll­out of de­liv­ery and pick­up ser­vice: View­port­Go su­per­mar­ket.com.go.”

The su­per­mar­kets’ Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Mel­ony Hunte told Guardian Me­dia, in ad­di­tion to sani­ti­sa­tion and pro­mot­ing its on­line de­liv­ery ser­vice, the su­per­mar­ket would be in­stalling sinks at the stores’ en­trances and would on­ly al­low a lim­it­ed num­ber of peo­ple in the gro­ceries, at any point in time.

She ex­plained that the su­per­mar­ket has two en­trances and ex­its and man­age­ment would be al­low­ing 25 cus­tomers in­side in the first in­stance.

Hunte said she closed the gro­cery be­cause cus­tomers were al­so not ad­her­ing to the rules and reg­u­la­tions set down to pre­vent the spread of the COVID-19.

She added peo­ple are now pay­ing more at­ten­tion and the gro­cery will re­main open as an es­sen­tial ser­vice to sup­ply all ne­ces­si­ties for the pub­lic.

“We are sat­is­fied that we are keep­ing our staff and cus­tomers safe as we are al­so san­i­tiz­ing our trol­leys con­stant­ly. We are en­cour­ag­ing all who vis­it us to fol­low our rules and guide­lines,” Hunte said.