GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Cham­ber is in the process of plan­ning an in­for­ma­tion ses­sion for its mem­bers in con­junc­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) fol­low­ing the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break.

It is al­so con­duct­ing a sur­vey with its mem­bers, both man­u­fac­tur­ers to im­porters to get pos­si­ble feed­back on any sup­ply chain chal­lenges and to iden­ti­fy so­lu­tions to mit­i­gate stock outs, said the Cham­ber’s CEO Gabriel Faria.

“We have al­so en­gaged the Min­istry of Health to at­tend so we can en­sure we pro­vide fact based guid­ance and dis­pel all the ru­mours around pre­ven­ta­tive ac­tions and deal­ing with it.

“Based on our var­i­ous dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Health and PA­HO we are com­fort­ed in know­ing that once we are pre­pared we have the abil­i­ty to mit­i­gate the wide­spread im­pact COVID-19 has had in some oth­er coun­tries,” Faria added.

He said the most im­por­tant as­pect is un­der­stand­ing the facts around per­son­al hy­giene.

Faria not­ed re­cent ini­tia­tives by the Min­istry of Trade and the Min­istry of Health to en­gage the pri­vate sec­tor on the im­pact COVID-19 can have on busi­ness­es’ sup­ply chain.

“I was very im­pressed with the ap­proach the Trade Min­is­ter and her team took not just reach­ing out to the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers but in the re­search her team did pri­or to the meet­ing.

“They had sig­nif­i­cant da­ta avail­able and we were able to have a con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion which will proac­tive­ly help us to deal with po­ten­tial stock outs of raw ma­te­ri­als and fin­ished goods im­ports,” Faria said.

He al­so com­mend­ed the Health Min­istry, not­ing there were pre-meet­ings held with key sup­pli­ers.

“Again dis­cus­sions re­volved around cor­rec­tive ac­tions such as iden­ti­fy­ing al­ter­nate sup­pli­ers and pri­or­i­tiz­ing items which were key in deal­ing with the virus.

“This high­lights the pow­er and pos­i­tive out­comes col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor could bring to the econ­o­my and to cit­i­zens,” Faria added.