Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

In light of the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ing that restau­rants are to be closed from to­day, Glob­al Brands Chair­man Mario Sab­ga-Aboud has in­di­cat­ed that his staff will be paid some­thing to sus­tain them­selves un­til the end of the month.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia (GML), Sab­ga-Aboud said: “So we’re just work­ing out the de­tails for them to be able to give them some kind of stipend un­til the end of the month be­cause they all will not have jobs.”

He in­di­cat­ed: “We are go­ing to give them some­thing, we just have to work out the de­tails of it.”

Sab­ga-Aboud in­di­cat­ed that the com­pa­ny would have been giv­ing out the per­ish­able items to all the staff be­cause they would have gone bad if they stayed un­til the end of the month.

The Glob­al Brands Com­pa­ny which in­cludes all the Rit­u­als, Church’s Chick­en, Piz­za Boys, Donut Boys and Wok ‘n Roll em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1500 peo­ple, across 10 coun­tries.

Sab­ga-Aboud not­ed that 60 to 70 per cent of the busi­ness was im­pact­ed be­fore and now it would reg­is­ter a 70to 100 per cent drop in the next few weeks.

Ac­cord­ing to Sab­ga-Aboud, he has had to close stores in St. Lu­cia and in St. Kitts, for cer­tain pe­ri­ods.

He as­sured that the team at Glob­al Brands is pray­ing for the na­tion.

Mean­while, own­er of Trent Restau­rants, Pe­ter George Jr. told GML that he does know if his busi­ness can, or any busi­ness can sus­tain an­oth­er two to three months “of this sit­u­a­tion.”

He in­di­cat­ed that the loss­es per month would be in the neigh­bour­hood of $2mil­lion and rent, util­i­ty or bank de­fer­rals will still have to be faced af­ter­wards.

George said that he is in sup­port of the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion if it was tak­en from a phys­i­o­log­i­cal stand point, as he un­der­stands that as food is trans­ferred from place to place (de­liv­er­ies) from hand to hand (curb-side pick­up) - there is a mas­sive po­ten­tial for the COVID-19 virus to spread.

George, whose restau­rants in­clude Trot­ters, Bu­zo, Tom­my’s, Ama­ra and Blue Star Din­er, al­so em­ploy­ees close to 500 em­ploy­ees across three is­lands. How­ev­er, George in­di­cat­ed that he is un­sure it is a good de­ci­sion if it was made from a crowd con­trol per­spec­tive. He re­marked: “Just down the road from Trot­ters, there was a line of no less than 200 peo­ple rush­ing to pay their Dig­i­cel and Flow bills so they don’t get cut off, which in it­self pos­es a crowd haz­ard.”

George con­tin­ued to note this is a po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic calami­ty that fac­ing the coun­try. He said: “We can’t sug­ar coat that, there is no way it can be sug­ar coat­ed. We have to be pre­pared for that, and for the en­tire­ly new eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment that we’re go­ing to be in when this thing is over.”

He posit­ed that every­thing is go­ing to change and there will not be any mag­i­cal ef­fects that will take things back to what was once nor­mal. George not­ed that the gov­ern­ment would have to in­ter­vene “on a colos­sal ba­sis.”

Ac­cord­ing to George: “There’s the HSF (Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund), there’s the IMF (In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund), there are all kinds of av­enues, but if the gov­ern­ment thinks that this is some­thing that shall pass, it’s not go­ing to pass, it’s go­ing to take a lot more than rent re­lief and salary re­lief and a food card.”

He not­ed that this is a glob­al eco­nom­ic cat­a­stro­phe on top of be­ing a med­ical cri­sis. Nonethe­less, George added: “The eco­nom­ic con­se­quences--and this maybe a con­tro­ver­sial com­ment --will dwarf the med­ical con­se­quences. That’s just what the re­al­i­ty is.”

The gov­ern­ment has done a good job, George said, but it now has to face the re­al­i­ty in front of which it stands.