SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pand the num­ber of safe zones as part of its strat­e­gy to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh made the call at a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day.

“Since the lift­ing of the State of Emer­gency and the cur­few, cas­es will be ris­ing and have start­ed to rise.  Safe zones have been ef­fec­tive in bars and restau­rants and can be more ef­fec­tive in de­creas­ing the spread of the virus,” Ram­s­ingh said.

“We would like to ask that this sys­tem start off small with banks, gro­ceries, re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions and al­so pub­lic spaces. We are hop­ing that even­tu­al­ly we can in­crease it to shop­ping malls and re­tail out­lets,” he added.

Ram­s­ingh al­so called for the open­ing of the sport­ing sec­tor through safe zones at sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. 

"We al­so hope peo­ple are en­cour­aged to get vac­ci­nat­ed. We think the safe zones are the way to go if we do not want to go in­to an­oth­er lock­down,” he said.

The Cou­va Cham­ber pres­i­dent said the cre­ation of ad­di­tion­al safe zones would not call for ad­di­tion­al labour, not­ing that work­ers do­ing san­i­ti­za­tion and tem­per­a­ture checks can al­so check for vac­ci­na­tion cards.

Ram­s­ingh as­sures that the call is not be­ing made to seg­re­gate but to en­sure choic­es are avail­able.

“If you choose not to get vac­ci­nat­ed that means your choice is not to be in con­gre­ga­tion, in a place where a lot of peo­ple can be," he ob­served.

Ram­s­ingh said the non-vac­ci­nat­ed can make on­line pur­chas­es and curb side pick­ups.

"We are just ask­ing that the safe zones en­cour­age more per­sons to get vac­ci­nat­ed so they can stay out of the ICU and stay away from death," he said. 

Point­ing out that a lot of peo­ple are still be­liev­ing pro­pa­gan­da spread by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, Ram­s­ingh said:

"Peo­ple have to un­der­stand the vac­cine is not con­ta­gious but it is the virus that is con­ta­gious."

The Cou­va Cham­ber pres­i­dent said he hopes the gov­ern­ment can join with busi­ness cham­bers and oth­er NGO's to en­cour­age more per­sons to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

About Safe Zones

Un­der gov­ern­ment’s Safe Zones ini­tia­tive, ac­cred­it­ed busi­ness places are able to ac­cept vac­ci­nat­ed cus­tomers on­ly, who must have proof of vac­ci­na­tion on them at all times.  In ad­di­tion, all em­ploy­ees of the es­tab­lish­ment must be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, with copies of their vac­ci­na­tion cards kept on the premis­es to be avail­able for in­spec­tion by the au­thor­i­ties, at any point in time.  Safe Zone busi­ness­es al­so must ad­here strict­ly to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, the Health Min­istry al­lows for ex­emp­tions and de­fer­rals to its Safe Zone pol­i­cy.

“A per­son with an au­then­tic Med­ical Ex­emp­tion / De­fer­ral Cer­tifi­cate and the re­quired neg­a­tive PCR Test as set out in the Pub­lic Health COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions, may al­so be per­mit­ted with­in a TT Safe Zone lo­ca­tion,” the min­istry states in its on­line overview of the Safe Zone pol­i­cy.

Busi­ness own­ers and op­er­a­tors who have three record­ed breach­es of the reg­u­la­tions may be pro­hib­it­ed from op­er­at­ing as a Safe Zone.

Safe Zone busi­ness­es in­clude restau­rants; bars; pri­vate mem­bers clubs; gam­ing hous­es, bet­ting pools or of­fices; cin­e­mas; the­atres; gyms and fit­ness stu­dios; and wa­ter­parks.