The Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) says it will not be mak­ing su­per­mar­kets safe zones nor sub­scrib­ing to that con­cept. The As­so­ci­a­tion was re­spond­ing to a joint press re­lease by AM­CHAM, Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the En­er­gy Cham­ber which called on the gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic spaces and busi­ness­es safe zones.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, SATT said they “recog­nise the cus­tomer’s right to ac­cess food­stuff which is a ba­sic need, there­fore, we can­not, in good con­science, refuse them the right to ac­cess that at our stores.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion added, “We must keep in mind that su­per­mar­kets have been op­er­at­ing non­stop dur­ing the pan­dem­ic un­af­fect­ed by clo­sures as an es­sen­tial busi­ness. This means we were forced to em­brace the flood of in­for­ma­tion that was com­ing out of the lead­ing world­wide health au­thor­i­ties, with re­spect to the use of PPE, san­i­ta­tion and what would even­tu­al­ly be­come the health pro­to­cols of hand wash­ing, mask wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

This al­so means we are unique­ly po­si­tioned to deal with it hav­ing done so for the pe­ri­od since March 2020.”

SATT said, it has em­ployed nu­mer­ous mea­sures to keep cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees safe.

“As such, we will nei­ther be nam­ing su­per­mar­kets safe zones nor sub­scrib­ing to that con­cept.”

It has called for a pol­i­cy po­si­tion to guide the na­tion along­side con­stant ed­u­ca­tion of the pros ver­sus the cons of vac­ci­na­tion.

SATT al­so said that no mem­ber in the As­so­ci­a­tion is en­gag­ing in preda­to­ry prac­tices at this time.

“We are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a deep fall­out from the calami­tous ef­fects felt by the glob­al sup­ply chain made more dele­te­ri­ous at this time by the pan­dem­ic. Ris­ing prices are be­ing passed on and, as an im­port de­pen­dent na­tion, there is lit­tle we can do to pre­vent that. There have been re­moval of VAT on ba­sic food items and peo­ple have ac­cess to sta­ples which our stores do their best to keep in­ven­to­ry items for the in­di­gent and vul­ner­a­ble.”