The Bar­keep­ers & Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (BOATT) has is­sued an apol­o­gy to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, for state­ments made by for­mer in­ter­im pres­i­dent, Teron Mo­han, fol­low­ing the PM’s press con­fer­ence, yes­ter­day, Sat­ur­day 21 No­vem­ber 2020.

Teron Mo­han had de­scribed as "a slap in the face" Dr Row­ley's an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day that $10 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to as­sist bar and restau­rant em­ploy­ees af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Among 5,000 bars, that fig­ure is work­ing out to $2,000 per bar.  How is that sup­posed to make any sort of dent, or re­lief with that al­lo­ca­tion? It's not ad­e­quate to pay rent, lights, util­i­ties, it can­not off­set our ex­pens­es and op­er­at­ing costs. It oc­curred to me that this Gov­ern­ment has no con­sid­er­a­tion to the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor; they're very con­tent to see bars go bel­ly up,” he told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view, fol­low­ing the PM’s an­nounce­ment.

Since then, Mr Mo­han has been re­placed as in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion by the vice-pres­i­dent, Satesh Moonasar, which BOATT con­firmed in a news re­lease this morn­ing.

In a fol­low-up news re­lease, BOATT is­sued a for­mal apol­o­gy to the Prime Min­is­ter and the coun­try for Teron Mo­han’s com­ments, de­scrib­ing them as “un­pro­fes­sion­al” and not re­flec­tive of the As­so­ci­a­tion’s views.

The state­ment, signed BOATT Ex­ec­u­tive, reads as fol­lows:

“On be­half of The Bar­keep­ers & Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go, we would like to ex­tend our sin­cer­est apolo­gies to the Prime Min­is­ter and the gen­er­al pub­lic for state­ments made by our for­mer in­ter­im pres­i­dent, Mr Teron Mo­han. This un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent hap­pened af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter’s press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day 21st No­vem­ber, 2020. The state­ment made was un­pro­fes­sion­al and does not re­flect nor rep­re­sent the views of the As­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive and its mem­bers.”

It con­tin­ues: “While the fi­nan­cial sup­port of­fered to the em­ploy­ees is great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed, it may not ad­e­quate­ly suf­fice the needs of the vast amount af­fect­ed. It is much need­ed sup­port for the in­dus­try es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this Yule­tide sea­son. The As­so­ci­a­tion wel­comes fu­ture sup­port and co-op­er­a­tion if re­stric­tions con­tin­ue.”

“The As­so­ci­a­tion’s goal is to help its mem­bers by en­gag­ing in pos­i­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers and does not con­done this be­hav­iour in any way,” BOATT adds. “The As­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive has tak­en full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Mr Mo­han’s un­for­tu­nate state­ment and the mat­ter has been dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly.”

“We once again we would like to ex­press our heart­felt apol­o­gy over this in­ci­dent and as­sure that there will not be a re­peat of this,” the state­ment ends.