Busi­ness­man Derek Chin says cin­e­mas and oth­er en­ter­tain­ment spaces are un­der pres­sure with the ex­tend­ed lock­downs and he wants Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to re­open the sec­tor.

Chin, who de­scribed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as “ill-con­ceived,” said: “We are very much un­der pres­sure. Over 3,500 per­sons are gross­ly af­fect­ed.”
“We have been closed for a sig­nif­i­cant­ly long time, 112 days in 2021 and 194 days in 2020.”

Chin said there is no sci­en­tif­ic da­ta or any in­ci­dence of COVID-19 cas­es em­a­nat­ing from a vis­it to a cin­e­ma.

“Un­found­ed clo­sures be­cause of an ill-con­ceived no­tion that cin­e­mas are caus­es of COVID spread. That has not been the case,” he said.

He added that there is a need for the pop­u­la­tion to “ex­hale and start to live life again.”
“Too much neg­a­tiv­i­ty and loss of hope. This lack of recre­ation and re­lax­ation has a neg­a­tive ef­fect on peo­ple and make them more sus­cep­ti­ble to a low­er re­sis­tance.”

He added: “There is plen­ty do­mes­tic and oth­er vi­o­lence as a re­sult of be­ing locked up. Road rage and peo­ple de­mand­ing more firearms in an­tic­i­pa­tion of in­creased crime. Peo­ple are fac­ing de­pres­sion and a sense of giv­ing up.

"That’s why our ath­letes can’t per­form and that’s the dan­ger in our so­ci­ety. Hope­less and fed up. And our Gov­ern­ment doesn’t see these ef­fects of their strate­gies.”
Chin said staff at Movi­eTowne are al­most 100 per cent ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and “the au­di­to­ri­ums very safe giv­en our con­tin­ued strict pro­to­cols.”

Re­porter: Rhon­dor Dowlat