The TT Cham­ber says they are in sup­port of the gov­ern­ment’s plans to make masks manda­to­ry.

How­ev­er, they rec­om­mend­ed caveats to pro­tect those who have le­git­i­mate med­ical rea­sons for be­ing un­able to wear masks, or who are en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties which do not fa­cil­i­tate wear­ing masks.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the TT Cham­ber:

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce notes the ini­tia­tive to amend the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance to in­clude penal­ties which will make it an of­fence for fail­ure to wear a mask in pub­lic places.

We con­firm our sup­port for pass­ing of the re­quired leg­is­la­tion, we rec­om­mend caveats to pro­tect those who have le­git­i­mate med­ical rea­sons for be­ing un­able to wear masks, or who are en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties which do not fa­cil­i­tate wear­ing masks.

The law must in­clude the ap­pro­pri­ate penal­ties; how­ev­er these should be in keep­ing with fines for sim­i­lar of­fences and rel­a­tive in­ter­na­tion­al bench­marks. On the 28th of Ju­ly we is­sued a re­lease stat­ing: It is our view that we all have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of cur­tail­ing the spread. We fur­ther be­lieve that the wear­ing of masks in all pub­lic spaces should be made manda­to­ry, giv­en that we are faced with a pub­lic health emer­gency.

This will fol­low the ex­am­ple of sev­er­al coun­tries which have been show­ing some suc­cess in con­tain­ing the spread, for ex­am­ple, Viet­nam, France, and Japan. A re­cent study by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty con­clud­ed that uni­ver­sal us­age of face masks in pub­lic spaces might sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce spread.

We know that many busi­ness­es have tak­en the re­quired steps to cre­ate a safe to work and shop en­vi­ron­ment for their em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers. The ini­tia­tives in­clude a “no mask, no ser­vice” rule and hand wash­ing/sani­ti­sa­tion be­fore en­try and in­creased work­place clean­ing.

The Cham­ber be­lieves that all busi­ness­es should en­force these poli­cies. Con­sumers must al­so ad­here to the safe­ty and san­i­ta­tion pro­to­cols re­quired by busi­ness­es and like­wise if they are not be­ing en­forced, have the choice to shop where they feel safer.

We in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly are re­spon­si­ble for lim­it­ing the spread of this virus. Once we fol­low the safe­ty pro­to­cols, we can flat­ten the curve. We all have a stake in keep­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go safe and for pro­tect­ing lives and liveli­hoods.