ANSA McAL Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny Sab­ga says he agrees more test­ing needs to be done to see ex­act­ly where Trinidad and To­ba­go is with con­trol­ling COVID-19 be­fore busi­ness­es can be re­opened ful­ly.

Speak­ing dur­ing CNC3's COVID-19, Road to Re­cov­ery, Nav­i­gat­ing the Cri­sis on Wednes­day night, Sab­ga gave Gov­ern­ment "full marks" for the way it had been deal­ing with the health cri­sis.

"I will re­main guid­ed by our ex­perts and I am cer­tain­ly no ex­pert, I am some­one who is mon­i­tor­ing. A lot of our busi­ness­es are al­ready op­er­at­ing and con­tin­ue to op­er­ate," Sab­ga said.

His com­ment came even as oth­er sec­tors were yes­ter­day dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the busi­ness sec­tor re-open­ing in phas­es af­ter an Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty study ranked T&T sec­ond world in terms of coun­tries which were in a good po­si­tion to start the rolling back COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Sab­ga said even with this in­for­ma­tion, he would re­ly on the ad­vice from Gov­ern­ment and ex­perts. He al­so wel­comed the call for more test­ing with­in the two-week ex­ten­sion of the re­stric­tions to May 10 and 15.

"I think in the judge­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter and the judge­ment of Gov­ern­ment, we need­ed to give our­selves a lit­tle more breath­ing room to be ab­solute­ly cer­tain and to as­sure our­selves that the re­quired and req­ui­site test­ing pro­to­cols are in place. I think the last thing that any­one wants to do is re­open far too quick­ly and then end up in a sit­u­a­tion where you end up go­ing back," he said.

Sab­ga said pro­to­cols al­so need­ed to be put in place for the re­tail out­lets and var­i­ous busi­ness­es to open prop­er­ly.

"So that when we do re­turn, we re­turn safe­ly," he said.

De­spite a will­ing­ness to abide by the ex­ten­sion of the re­stric­tions, Sab­ga al­so not­ed it was im­por­tant to keep the "wheels of com­merce turn­ing".

"The same way we phased down is that we start phas­ing back in. A lev­el of main­te­nance of some of the hy­giene pro­to­cols, so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols and as peo­ple's psy­che be­come more and more com­fort­able, I think the mar­ket forces them­selves will nor­malise what needs to be nor­malised," Sab­ga said.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­cent­ly read out a let­ter of praise over the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of the cri­sis from an un­named con­glom­er­ate. While Sab­ga did not con­firm whether that let­ter orig­i­nat­ed from his desk, he said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing a great job.

"The ANSA McAL group stands in full sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and it is im­por­tant that we as a na­tion com­mend and give full marks to the Gov­ern­ment in their re­ac­tion to the pan­dem­ic," he said.

He said the way the State adapt­ed and lo­calised the in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so de­served praise.

"It was that quick move­ment that has us where we are to­day," he point­ed out.

He said the group was al­so able to adapt quick­ly to the new nor­mal brought on the virus.

"Well, we con­tin­ue to adapt and I think it's a work in progress. When this thing first kicked off our first re­ac­tion was ob­vi­ous­ly to­wards and re­mains the safe­ty of our 6,000 strong em­ploy­ee base and in fact, just be­fore the WHO and the gov­ern­ments in the re­gion start­ed trig­ger­ing the work-from-home pro­to­cols, we start­ed cre­at­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty to work from home op­por­tu­ni­ties for our at-risk and el­der­ly em­ploy­ees, peo­ple who are im­muno-com­pro­mised, to en­sure their safe­ty. Since then we have put in place work-from-home pro­to­cols," he said.

The com­pa­nies, he said, have al­so been able to main­tain pro­duc­tiv­i­ty de­spite the re­stric­tions and the lim­it­ed staff in of­fices.

In fact, Sab­ga said it was the group's grat­i­tude to­ward the hard-work­ing es­sen­tial staff through­out the coun­try that trig­gered the re­cent Na­tion­al Day of Ap­plause ini­tia­tive.

"We were so moved by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of our peo­ple bring­ing this es­sen­tial sup­port to the coun­try, it turned in­to a na­tion­al move­ment," he said.

"We con­tin­ue to adapt."