SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that when the Gov­ern­ment be­gins re­open­ing the coun­try, it will be done on a phased ba­sis, sim­i­lar to the sys­tem used dur­ing last year’s first wave of COVID-19.

Young was speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence af­ter a joint-min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing with the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers to dis­cuss the is­sues fac­ing busi­ness­es that have been shut down by the re­cent Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

Among the at­ten­dees were Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment. The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was rep­re­sent­ed by T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley, Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Ghany,  Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) head Gre­go­ry Aboud, Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) head Ra­jiv Diptee, T&T Cham­ber To­ba­go Chap­ter pres­i­dent Di­ane Hadad, T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) pres­i­dent Mark Edghill and T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al, among oth­ers.

Young said the vir­tu­al meet­ing last­ed more than two hours and the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were told of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­open on a phased ba­sis.

But Young said any re­open­ing is con­tin­gent on a  re­duc­tion in COVID-19 case num­bers, as he said the health and safe­ty of cit­i­zens must be put first. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is part of the joint min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, Young said, but he did not at­tend the meet­ing.

He said there was no de­ci­sion yet on when mea­sures can be rolled back.

“We will sit down with the Min­istry of Health as we be­gin tem­plat­ing how we are go­ing to open and how we are go­ing to re­open the econ­o­my, but to re­open it in a safe man­ner. We will be us­ing the same tem­plate of a phased re­open­ing but there are a lot of things that have come to the ta­ble now for us to con­sid­er when we are work­ing this out,” Young said.

Young said the com­mit­tee lis­tened to the con­fed­er­a­tion’s con­cerns and made a re­quest of their own—ask­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to help dis­cour­age vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy. He said the con­fed­er­a­tion has sig­nalled its in­tent to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in its ef­forts to curb the spread of the virus.

“The busi­ness sec­tor, in par­tic­u­lar AM­CHAM, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try and DO­MA, they were ad­vo­cat­ing to us to­day that any fur­ther re­stric­tions that are need­ed to be put in place by the Gov­ern­ment, it is bet­ter to take a bit­ter med­i­cine now and hope­ful­ly have the re­sults soon­er rather than lat­er,” Young said.

He said the Ju­ly 4 date for the end of the cur­rent re­stric­tions is not set in stone and re­stric­tions can be rolled back soon­er if case num­bers de­cline.

He said the con­fed­er­a­tion has al­so asked the min­is­te­r­i­al team to have con­ver­sa­tions with lead­ers in the bank­ing sec­tor to ease the strain on small busi­ness­es with their fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

Gopee-Scoon said the is­sue of dig­i­tal plat­forms was al­so dis­cussed.

She, how­ev­er, cau­tioned busi­ness­es about op­er­at­ing on a vir­tu­al plat­form where con­tact can be made be­tween staff and the pub­lic dur­ing de­liv­er­ies.

“We have al­ways en­cour­aged at the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, SMEs in par­tic­u­lar, to take ad­van­tage of e-com­merce and we are very sat­is­fied that there are now all of these plat­forms, bank plat­forms and non-bank plat­forms that fa­cil­i­tate e-com­merce and in­deed this is the way for­ward but cau­tion, I think for now it has to be dig­i­tal and con­tact­less,” she said.

In a re­lease af­ter the meet­ing, the con­fed­er­a­tion said it has sug­gest­ed that a con­ver­sa­tion be start­ed about busi­ness op­er­a­tions in a COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment, as it said ex­tend­ed clo­sure can­not be a long term so­lu­tion.

It has al­so sug­gest­ed a for­mal COVID-19 ex­po­sure risk as­sess­ment should be done in all sec­tors.