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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Concern over crowds at Chaguanas market

by

1360 days ago
20210523
Shoppers at the Chaguanas Market on Saturday morning.

Shoppers at the Chaguanas Market on Saturday morning.

Shastri Boodan

Shas­tri Boodan

There was very lit­tle so­cial dis­tanc­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket yes­ter­day where many of the ven­dors re­sort­ed to sell­ing in the aisles and to be con­stant­ly chased by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers.

The sit­u­a­tion was blamed on the fail­ure by the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to put in place a sys­tem to con­trol flow of cus­tomers

On Fri­day, May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed an­nounced that the mar­ket would be opened through­out the week be­tween the hours of 5.01 am to 2 pm to fa­cil­i­tate dai­ly san­i­ta­tion ex­er­cis­es. He said that the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice would mon­i­tor shop­pers to en­sure so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

Mo­hammed said: “At this time, we are not of the view that it is nec­es­sary to re­duce days of op­er­a­tion of the mar­ket as a re­duc­tion of days will re­sult in more buy­ers rush­ing on the days the mar­ket is open which would en­cour­age gath­er­ing and the spread of the virus will be more preva­lent.

“This is di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to what we are try­ing to achieve in terms of mit­i­gat­ing cas­es of COVID-19.”

Mo­hammed said a spe­cial team will be es­tab­lished to san­i­tize the mar­ket reg­u­lar­ly and to mon­i­tor the en­trances and ex­its dur­ing hours of op­er­a­tion.

“They will en­sure that cus­tomers san­i­tize and wash their hands be­fore en­ter­ing the mar­ket. Fi­nal­ly, steps are be­ing tak­en to en­sure the in­stal­la­tion of ad­di­tion­al sinks in the mar­ket for wash­ing of hands. We re­it­er­ate the need for per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ask cus­tomers of the mar­ket to com­plete their shop­ping in a time­ly man­ner.

“If all guide­lines are fol­lowed, we are con­fi­dent we can re­duce the spread of COVID-19 in Ch­agua­nas and by ex­ten­sion, Trinidad & To­ba­go.”


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