Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is ap­peal­ing to cit­i­zens to stop their “smart man-ism” over the new law which makes it manda­to­ry to wear face masks in pub­lic to pro­tect against the spread of COVID-19 virus.

He made the call dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, as he said cit­i­zens were now find­ing many ex­cus­es about why the manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing reg­u­la­tion, which came in­to ef­fect on Mon­day, should not ap­ply to them. He said, how­ev­er, that the reg­u­la­tions sur­round­ing the new pol­i­cy is ground­ed in al­ready ex­ist­ing laws in the coun­try.

“This is not a time for smart man-ism or smart woman-ism. It’s not a time for you to be as nov­el as you can be in every ex­cep­tion as to why the law ought not to ap­ply to you. We do not have the lib­er­ty of pro­tect­ing our so­ci­ety with­out co­op­er­a­tion,” he said as he sought to ad­dress com­men­taries and crit­i­cisms in the pub­lic do­main on the new pol­i­cy.

A num­ber of cit­i­zens have tak­en to so­cial me­dia to voice their crit­i­cism over two el­e­ments of the reg­u­la­tion since it be­came law.

The ma­jor bone of con­tention is the sec­tion which al­lows po­lice of­fi­cers to charge chil­dren eight years and over for not wear­ing their masks in pub­lic—which car­ries a fine of $1,000 for the first of­fence, $2,000 for the sec­ond and fines up to a max­i­mum $20,000 for the most se­ri­ous breach­es. Cit­i­zens are al­so tak­ing is­sue with the man­date for masks to be worn by every oc­cu­pant in a ve­hi­cle once that num­bers more than one per­son, even if it’s fam­i­ly mem­bers who live in the same house­hold.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi once again ex­plained that the lat­ter man­date was cre­at­ed be­cause of the preva­lence of “PH” taxi dri­vers and the dif­fi­cul­ty for law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to ver­i­fy that the oc­cu­pants of any ve­hi­cle were fam­i­ly mem­bers re­sid­ing un­der one roof.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ex­plained that Cab­i­net ref­er­enced sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion from around the world in cre­at­ing the new leg­is­la­tion, not­ing that many oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions not on­ly al­so had charges against chil­dren but had harsh­er rep­ri­mands for breach­es.

He dis­missed sev­er­al crit­i­cisms about chil­dren over the age of eight re­ceiv­ing fines for breach­es. He said the reg­u­la­tion op­er­at­ed with­in the pa­ra­me­ters and in co­he­sion with ex­ist­ing laws. For in­stance, he said the Chil­dren’s Act dic­tates that it is the par­ent or guardian of the child who would be li­able to pay the fine.

“Sec­tions 56 and 57 of the Chil­dren’s Act specif­i­cal­ly pro­vide that where a child is charged with any of­fence which is treat­able by a fine or dam­ages or cost, that the par­ent, guardian or per­son with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the per­son who the court would look to for the pay­ment of the fine,” Al-Rawi ex­plained.

“Avoid the smart man-ism and smart woman-ism. Just wear your mask. En­cour­age peo­ple around you po­lite­ly to put on their mask and let’s get on to get­ting back to work and get­ting back to liveli­hood.”