Sascha Wil­son

While the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor is like­ly to re­open on June 22 it might re­quire cin­e­mas and bars op­er­at­ing at half ca­pac­i­ty and re­duced hours. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at his press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day an­nounced that once there is no change in the COVID-19 cas­es, cin­e­mas, bars, and gyms will be al­lowed to open on June 22.

Movi­eTowne CEO, Ste­fan Chin said they have rec­om­mend­ed that the ac­com­mo­da­tion ca­pac­i­ty be re­duced by 50 per cent. How­ev­er, he said the staff might be af­fect­ed.

“If our ca­pac­i­ty is cut dras­ti­cal­ly it is not like­ly of course to keep all of the staff at that time. Maybe as we go for­ward of course we could bring them back.”

Re­gard­ing seat­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion, he said peo­ple from the same group will be al­lowed to sit to­geth­er, but groups will be kept one or two seats apart.

As to whether or not peo­ple will still be al­lowed to min­gle and so­cialise on the out­skirts of the cin­e­ma, he said that signs ad­vis­ing and en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to ad­here to so­cial dis­tanc­ing, wear­ing masks, and oth­er re­quire­ments will be post­ed in the cin­e­mas and malls.

He said there will al­so be so­cial dis­tance mark­ers on the ground at the box of­fi­cers, cin­e­mas, and con­ces­sion stands, as well as plex­i­glass screens to pro­tect staff and cus­tomers. How­ev­er, he said peo­ple will al­so have to ex­er­cise a cer­tain lev­el of dis­cre­tion and try as best as pos­si­ble to abide by the pro­to­cols.

Teron Mo­han, in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the Bar Own­ers/Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BOATT), wants clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter in terms of ca­pac­i­ty per­cent­age.

“This is what is con­fus­ing the mass­es. What he (Prime Min­is­ter) said yes­ter­day was just sug­ges­tive. He said al­low­ing on­ly five to ten cus­tomers in an es­tab­lish­ment is not prac­ti­cal.”

Mo­han said his mem­bers are com­fort­able with 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

“I need some clar­i­ty on the per­cent­age per oc­cu­pan­cy be­cause to re­strict to num­bers it will not work for many of us, if not all of us. In my es­tab­lish­ment ten peo­ple alone that is a drop in the buck­et. In some in­stances, it may cost more to open and op­er­ate than to fa­cil­i­tate ten peo­ple at a time.”

An­oth­er is­sue, he said, is that it will be al­most im­pos­si­ble for cus­tomers to wear face masks be­cause it is re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty that they will be tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

“We will en­force staff for the in­ter­im to wear a mask that is about as far as we are com­fort­able go­ing.”

He is hope­ful that in two weeks masks will no longer be a na­tion­al re­quire­ment. He said seat­ing arrange­ments will al­so be dif­fer­ent. One of the mea­sures will be, we will have to move around ta­bles to open up the space a lit­tle bet­ter. I will not fa­cil­i­tate the ad­join­ing of ta­bles or the ad­join­ing of ad­di­tion­al seats.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said they will have to prop­er­ly mon­i­tor the num­bers of cus­tomers to en­sure it does not cross ca­pac­i­ty. He al­so an­tic­i­pates that their busi­ness hours will be re­strict­ed.