Gail Alexan­der

Some job loss­es and per­ma­nent clo­sures are in­evitable among small and medi­um busi­ness­es which will be un­able to ful­fil the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for the pri­vate sec­tor to “car­ry work­ers” un­til the end of the height­ened lock­down.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Jai Lelad­hars­ingh (co-or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of 15 re­gion­al busi­ness cham­bers).

With hos­pi­tals at tip­ping point with spik­ing COVID pres­sures, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced roll­back to shut down of var­i­ous sec­tors which were re­strict­ed in the first 2020 COVID wave. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged the pri­vate sec­tor to make the sac­ri­fice, not look at the fi­nan­cial bot­tom line and “car­ry” - con­tin­ue to keep - their work­ers dur­ing the clo­sures.

Lelad­hars­ingh said, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly the bot­tom line which mem­bers project is, some busi­ness­es may close per­ma­nent­ly, oth­ers will def­i­nite­ly lay off some staff mem­bers ex­pect­ed a more struc­tured pro­gramme. The $50m to as­sist some ar­eas didn’t men­tion this sec­tor which has no sup­port com­pared to what oth­er coun­tries gave their small/medi­um-sized sec­tors. Street vend­ing is al­ready be­ing af­fect­ed as sup­plies are at high cost.’’

Con­fed­er­a­tion mem­bers are hope­ful NIS or Health Sur­charge is de­ferred for this quar­ter at least to ease their fi­nan­cial bur­den.

In the sit­u­a­tion, the Con­fed­er­a­tion urged Gov­ern­ment to dou­bly en­sure vac­cine pro­cure­ment since hos­pi­tal sys­tems are sway­ing un­der COVID pres­sure and al­so en­sure prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion of health pro­to­cols for the pub­lic to un­der­stand.

Some peo­ple have asked Guardian Me­dia whether mar­kets would open still, whether con­struc­tion can con­tin­ue or if ho­tels can op­er­ate. Top po­lice told Guardian Me­dia they’d al­so re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls ask­ing if "X or Y could op­er­ate".

The Con­fed­er­a­tion rec­om­mend­ed civ­il au­thor­i­ties un­der­take ac­tion to en­sure greater rig­or­ous en­force­ment of health pro­to­cols, ac­com­pa­nied by a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gramme from the Gov­ern­ment with strong mes­sages to in­form cit­i­zens.

SATT stuck

The Con­fed­er­a­tion en­cour­aged Gov­ern­ment to pro­cure vac­cines as a top pri­or­i­ty and en­gage with the pri­vate sec­tor to ac­quire the suf­fi­cient to ful­ly in­oc­u­late the pop­u­la­tion.

"The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion and ANSA McAl Group of­fered to pur­chase vac­cines. ANSA McAl’s Dr Nor­man Sab­ga and SATT pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee must be com­mend­ed,’’ the Con­fed­er­a­tion stat­ed

But SATT’s Diptee told Guardian Me­dia that SATT, an as­so­ciate Con­fed­er­a­tion mem­ber, has been un­able at this point to get a vac­cine sup­pli­er due to over­whelm­ing de­mand for vac­cines from COVID stressed coun­tries like In­dia.

SATT ap­pealed in March to be al­lowed to bring in vac­cines to its front­line work­ers and sub­mit­ted a re­quest to Gov­ern­ment. The Health Min­istry re­spond­ed by ask­ing SATT to pro­vide the name of its World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion–ap­proved vac­cine sup­pli­er, the lo­cal agent who will bring in the vac­cines and vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tors.

Diptee said he not­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments that oth­er coun­tries can’t at this point bring in vac­cines due to de­mands by oth­er states.

“We’ve been talk­ing to sup­pli­ers and al­so found the sit­u­a­tion in In­dia es­pe­cial­ly di­vert­ed a lot of any kind of ca­pac­i­ty for vac­cines. There’s no ex­cess cur­rent­ly. This is where we are but will con­tin­ue talks.’’

Vac­cine pri­or­i­ty now - Mooni­lal

UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said vac­cines must be a pri­or­i­ty now.

“Our hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty is strain­ing un­der tremen­dous stress. San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency sec­tion is burst­ing with COVID cas­es in­clud­ing con­cerns about sup­plies. There are con­cerns about Cou­va Hos­pi­tal’s staff and wa­ter.”

Mooni­lal said in about a re­gion of five or six con­stituen­cies there are about 200 cas­es.

“But thanks to the Prime min­is­ter and Stu­art Young, in the south-west penin­su­la, pirogues are now known as P1 (Brazil­ian vari­ant ). Tar­get­ting the 15 beach­es as they said last Sun­day is a step in the right di­rec­tion but too lit­tle too late.”

“In our cri­sis, vac­ci­na­tion is the on­ly so­lu­tion but they can­not say when or how we’ll get the next mil­lion dos­es need­ed for herd im­mu­ni­ty.

“Gov­ern­ment’s op­er­at­ed with­out moral au­thor­i­ty - we saw cas­es where PNM fi­nanciers had 200 plus peo­ple at a wed­ding at­tend­ed by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Then the Prime Min­is­ter ‘in­vit­ed’ a mil­lion peo­ple to vis­it To­ba­go for East­er. So the coun­try’s leader has un­der­mined T&T’s cam­paign against COVID. So don’t just bouff peo­ple now, fo­cus on get­ting vac­cines.’’