Hair­dressers, bar­bers, beau­ty tech­ni­cians, gar­den­ers, do­mes­tic work­ers and spas have been grant­ed per­mis­sion to re­sume op­er­a­tions from Mon­day. With more seg­ments of the econ­o­my open­ing up as Phase Four of the process takes ef­fect, pub­lic trans­port op­er­a­tors have been told they can in­crease pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty to 75 per cent from Mon­day.

An­nounc­ing the lat­est eas­ing of re­stric­tions dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said as med­ical sta­tis­tics con­tin­ue to hold firm, all places of wor­ship will be al­lowed to re­open from Fri­day.

Re­it­er­at­ing that re­stric­tions re­mained in place for all of these busi­ness and re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions, Row­ley out­lined the pro­to­cols for sani­tis­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and the manda­to­ry wear­ing of face masks.

To the own­ers/op­er­a­tors of all re­li­gious wor­ship halls, he ad­vised that they lim­it ser­vices to just one hour. "Where pews are avail­able, oc­cu­py al­ter­nate pews at arm’s length," he said. At places of wor­ship where there are no pews, bench­es or chairs, he ad­vised that mark­ers be af­fixed to the ground six feet apart so there would be over­crowd­ing.

Pub­lic gath­er­ings in­crease to 10

In­di­cat­ing health and safe­ty guide­lines would ap­ply, Row­ley, added, "We are in­creas­ing the num­ber of per­sons who can con­gre­gate to ten." He said peo­ple gath­er­ing in pub­lic spaces, how­ev­er, must dis­tance them­selves ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

Al­so from June 22, the PM said, all pub­lic trans­port can be­gin op­er­at­ing at 100 pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty again.

The PM was op­ti­mistic that if the num­bers re­main un­changed up to June 22, bars, gyms, casi­nos, cin­e­mas, in-house din­ing at restau­rants, beach­es, rivers and sport­ing field ac­tiv­i­ties (mi­nus the sta­di­um crowds) can al­so restart.

June 22 all pub­lic ser­vants back to work

List­ing June 22 as the day when "The pub­lic ser­vice should get back to nor­mal," Row­ley said this would en­tail all gov­ern­ment work­ers re­turn­ing to work.

He ex­plained that be­tween June 8 to June 22, pub­lic ser­vice man­agers would need to take "all the nec­es­sary steps to re­ceive and en­cour­age staff in, so be­tween now and June 22 they will con­tin­ue the ro­ta­tion arrange­ments and do al­ter­nate days, but from June 22, all ser­vices should be avail­able util­is­ing all the em­ploy­ees of the Pub­lic Ser­vice."

Bor­ders, schools re­main closed

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the coun­try’s bor­ders along with the school sys­tem would be the on­ly two ar­eas that would re­main closed af­ter June 22, Row­ley said this meant, "This coun­try should be back to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of its func­tion­al­i­ty."

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on whether the Gov­ern­ment felt ob­lig­at­ed to step in and pro­vide fur­ther fi­nan­cial cush­ion­ing to peo­ple who con­tin­ue to be re­trenched in the pri­vate sec­tor, Row­ley said an­tic­i­pat­ing the dis­rup­tion that would have oc­curred as a re­sult of COVID-19 ini­tial­ly, "most of those pre-emp­tive steps were meant to cre­ate breath­ing space for the pri­vate sec­tor to sur­vive and to con­tin­ue." That re­mains in place, he added.

New Ari­ma hos­pi­tal opens on Tues­day

In­di­cat­ing there would be no fur­ther an­nounce­ments be­fore June 20 un­less sig­nif­i­cant changes oc­cur, Row­ley said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would ad­dress is­sues on Fri­day dur­ing the mid-year re­view, in­clud­ing the over­lap of some of the rec­om­men­da­tions which were in­clud­ed in the first draft of the re­port from the Road Map Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee.

Crit­i­cis­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over al­leged state­ments that the Min­istry of Health was mis­lead­ing and fool­ing the pop­u­la­tion that there nev­er was a par­al­lel health sys­tem in place, Row­ley ques­tioned, "Now what man­ner of pub­lic of­fi­cial would make a state­ment like that in T&T?"

Coun­ter­ing this, he said the new Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal which will be opened on Tues­day, and the new Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal had both been ear­marked for use dur­ing COVID-19, while part of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal was al­so com­man­deered for use dur­ing COVID-19.