The net cast by the coun­try's lim­it­ed state of emer­gency yes­ter­day forced busi­ness­es to scram­ble and read­just their sched­ules for those op­er­at­ing in hot spot ar­eas or to ac­com­mo­date em­ploy­ees from those ar­eas.Su­per­mar­kets, busi­ness places, restau­rants and even the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion as­sem­bled emer­gency meet­ings to ad­just their work­ing hours to have their work­ers out of the city be­fore the 9 pm cur­few. Amer­i­can Air­lines can­celled two flights-one sched­uled to leave Pi­ar­co at 11.05 pm and an­oth­er sched­uled to ar­rive at 6.50 am. The com­pa­ny said it "will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and make op­er­a­tional de­ter­mi­na­tions as nec­es­sary."

Of con­cern to busi­ness­es was the ef­fi­cien­cy with which pass­es could be se­cured to en­able a fair­ly nor­mal work­ing rou­tine, said Ker­ron Valen­tine, act­ing may­or of Port-of-Spain. He said ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, all street wash­ing in the cap­i­tal city has been sus­pend­ed for the 15-day state of emer­gency. The streets are usu­al­ly washed in the ear­ly morn­ing hours but the cur­few would not per­mit it, said Valen­tine. He said an emer­gency cau­cus meet­ing was held yes­ter­day morn­ing to de­ter­mine how the cor­po­ra­tion and its em­ploy­ees would do its work, such as garbage col­lec­tion, dog-catch­ing, street-sweep­ing and night work. He said the Cen­tral Mar­ket would now open at 6 am and all work­ers would re­port to the cor­po­ra­tion at 7 am.

"We have ad­just­ed all the shift work­ers to suit the cur­few hours. Work­ers who live around the city would run the first shift," he told the T&T Guardian. Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Do­minic Hadeed said man­u­fac­tures were aware they would have to pay over­time for a short pe­ri­od of time. Fur­ther­more, for those man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies that work shifts, they have tried to ros­ter peo­ple who work in the hot spot ar­eas to do the day shift, he said.Hadeed said he hoped unions would make an al­lowance for work­ers in those cir­cum­stances. The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) is­sued a re­lease to re­mind all shift work­ers of their rights to de­mand ad­e­quate arrange­ments to en­sure their safe­ty "in pur­suit of meet­ing the pro­duc­tion re­quire­ments of their re­spec­tive em­ploy­ers."

Hi-Lo Food Stores sent out an ad­vi­so­ry stat­ing that un­til fur­ther no­tice, all Hi-Lo Stores, Food­Mas­ters & LB's Su­per­mar­kets would close at 6 pm. Dane Dar­basie, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Wendy's, said the cur­few has had an "ad­verse im­pact on rev­enue stream." He point­ed out that in his re-ad­just­ed hours of 7 am-7.30 pm he would eas­i­ly lose a quar­ter of his busi­ness in the com­ing days. He said the busi­ness was pre­pared to make the sac­ri­fice on the as­sur­ance that in the long run they would ben­e­fit from a safer coun­try. "The din­ner crowd is a ma­jor part of any restau­rant," he said. Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin said the cur­few could cause his en­ter­prise hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars worth of busi­ness but it was a sac­ri­fice that was es­sen­tial to en­sure the safe­ty of T&T's cit­i­zens.

Chin said the cin­e­mas and restau­rants at In­vad­er's Bay, while not a des­ig­nat­ed hot spot, had staff and pa­trons who live in ar­eas where the cur­few would be in ef­fect. All restau­rants would close ear­ly and the last movie would start at 5 pm. Grand Bazaar's gen­er­al man­ag­er, Ed­ward Ayin, said stores would be closed by 7 pm. While he did not ex­pect big los­es over the next few days, he said the mall's restau­rants and bars with­in the plaza would be most af­fect­ed. Ayin said Grand Bazaar was in full sup­port of the cur­few and all steps were be­ing tak­en to en­sure mall staff have ad­e­quate time to get home.

ASHA JAVEED and ALI­CIA LLANOS