Par­lia­ment will to­day en­force reg­u­la­tions un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance (PHO) that will give Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh pow­er to shut down bars, casi­nos, mem­bers’ clubs and restau­rants across the coun­try dur­ing the re­sponse to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

Own­ers of such es­tab­lish­ments who fail to close dur­ing the pe­ri­od stip­u­lat­ed will be im­pris­oned for six months, ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Health (2019) Nov­el Coro­n­avirus Reg­u­la­tions 2020.

En­force­ment of the new law will help con­trol and pre­vent the spread of the virus, main­ly in bars and clubs, but al­so in restau­rants that pro­vide seat­ing and din­ing to cus­tomers.

The or­di­nance stat­ed that the busi­ness of a bar, whether or not the per­son is li­censed un­der the Liquor Li­cens­es Act, will face jail. These reg­u­la­tions will come in­to force to­mor­row and ex­pire on April 20, 2020.

The move comes one day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged the pop­u­la­tion to lim­it pub­lic gath­er­ings to ten peo­ple in pub­lic places in an at­tempt to curb the virus’ spread in T&T. Row­ley al­so warned that a crack­down was com­ing on bars and riv­er limes.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said with re­gards to the clo­sure of bars and restau­rants, the Gov­ern­ment will go to Par­lia­ment “to­mor­row” (to­day) with lim­it­ed leg­is­la­tion.

“One of the things we looked at overnight and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ad­vised the Cab­i­net to­day, and we ac­cept­ed it un­der the old Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance, it al­lows the Min­is­ter of Health cer­tain reg­u­la­tions.”

Deyals­ingh, who at­tend­ed the press con­fer­ence, agreed with the move.

The reg­u­la­tions, Young said, will be en­forced, “stop­ping the open­ing of bars ... al­low­ing restau­rants to just serve food with no in-house din­ing ... deal­ing with casi­nos and oth­er mem­bers clubs.”

This mea­sure, Young said, would pre­vent peo­ple from gath­er­ing for the next few weeks, which is ex­pect­ed to be the peak pe­ri­od of the virus.

“The reg­u­la­tions that will come in­to play by the Min­is­ter of Health now give fur­ther le­gal au­thor­i­ty that is out­side of the law of loi­ter­ing for us to lit­er­al­ly close down bars. Mean­ing, all bars will be sus­pend­ed and you will be see­ing from that, no bar can be opened. That is now go­ing to be pro­nounced in law,” Young said.

“We are plead­ing with you to self-quar­an­tine your­self with­out us hav­ing to use the full force of the law.”

Young said po­lice of­fi­cers have al­so been out vis­it­ing bars and oth­er es­tab­lish­ments to see if own­ers have been com­ply­ing with the re­quest to keep their busi­ness­es closed.

“At this stage, we don’t want to go down the road of any heavy hand,” he said.

Young not­ed, how­ev­er, that over 90 per cent of bar own­ers have com­plied with the or­der to close their bars and not serve cus­tomers. But he said some peo­ple are still be­ing so­cial­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble with their ac­tions.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia af­ter the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed the va­lid­i­ty of the new law. He said the Gov­ern­ment was left with no choice be­cause some peo­ple were not ad­her­ing to the rec­om­men­da­tions on the clo­sure of bars. He said the time frame for the reg­u­la­tions from March 21 to April 20 could al­ways be ad­just­ed up­ward or down­ward as the Gov­ern­ment sees fit as the coun­try seeks to fight the virus off.