Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said the val­ue of the sav­ings in his mu­tu­al funds ac­count de­clined by al­most 40 per cent, due to cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions.

At yes­ter­day’s brief­ing, he said he’s “now down” that much. He added that in cop­ing with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic T&T is go­ing through a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od but has to stay the course, make sen­si­ble de­ci­sions and hope to come out with “lives in hand.”

Row­ley said he has worked all his life and has a small sav­ings ac­count. He added that he hadn’t told his wife yet but saw the ac­count state­ment on Sun­day night and it had de­clined. An­oth­er ac­count de­clined by 39 per cent.

“I’m not get­ting any younger and I can’t start over sav­ing, I just have to hold the fort and hope the mar­kets turn around and see if over time these mu­tu­al funds will have greater val­ue,“ he said.

Row­ley said as­sets fall in val­ue due to mar­ket con­di­tions.

“If you asked me in Jan­u­ary how much I was worth, I’m now down by 40 per cent,” he said.

On the is­sue of bars, Row­ley said he was re­cent­ly con­tact­ed about a bar which was “ram cram jam-full of peo­ple” the sort of sit­u­a­tion that puts all at risk.

He said while he un­der­stands what the bar spokes­peo­ple say, when they note that peo­ple go out in­to the streets and it’s not their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, “they have to un­der­stand they’re in a busi­ness that caus­es peo­ple to vi­o­late pro­to­cols, un­like oth­er places.”

Dr Row­ley added: “The cake shop doesn’t do that. Peo­ple go to bars to hob-nob with friends and when you drink al­co­hol you be­come less re­spon­si­ble.”

Row­ley said it was on­ly when the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er says po­lice can re­dou­ble the ef­fort to in­di­vid­u­al­ly pros­e­cute peo­ple or close bars that an ad­just­ment can be made. He said he hoped that would be very soon but un­til then “we can on­ly hold it where it is now.”

He not­ed that in Ko­rea one in­fect­ed per­son caused that coun­try to re­turn to high in­fec­tion lev­els.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he was ap­palled last Sun­day to see peo­ple in their 20s and 30s lim­ing on west­ern Ari­api­ta Av­enue in such close quar­ters “It was scary.”

“If those peo­ple have chil­dren and their chil­dren have to go to school, if you go to bars and get the virus, it could in­fect the chil­dren and jeop­ar­dise the school term re­open­ing. This isn’t about pun­ish­ing bar op­er­a­tors, it’s about ask­ing pa­trons to drink re­spon­si­bly,” the min­is­ter said.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment is pitch­ing for school re­open­ing in Sep­tem­ber, but con­tact be­tween young peo­ple and home could be­come ar­eas of risk.

“God for­bid if some­thing oc­curred to make COVID num­bers go awry. If so, he said, an ad­just­ment would be nec­es­sary.”

Of­fi­cials of the Health and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istries will meet to­mor­row to dis­cuss school re­open­ings.

—Gail Alexan­der