Sascha Wil­son

Just a week in­to the re­open­ing of bars, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is warn­ing that they may have to shut them down again if op­er­a­tors and pa­trons con­tin­ue to act ir­re­spon­si­bly.

Deyals­ingh gave the warn­ing at Sat­ur­day’s Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence as he re­ferred to two “dis­turb­ing” videos cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia of bars in Ch­agua­nas and North Trinidad jam­packed with pa­trons.

Say­ing this was one of the rea­sons the re­open­ing of bars was among the last sec­tors ad­dressed in the Gov­ern­ment’s COVID mea­sures, Deyals­ingh said ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour in bars had forced many coun­tries to re­in­state lock­down mea­sures.

“We are sad­ly notic­ing that now hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, more Trinidad.”

Al­lud­ing to so­cial me­dia videos, he said peo­ple were in each oth­er faces, par­ty­ing.

“We are ask­ing those bar own­ers and pa­trons to please ex­er­cise some dis­cre­tion in how you use bars, how you op­er­ate bars, it is for your own good.”

How­ev­er, he said as a re­sult of the ac­tiv­i­ty seen in the videos, he and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Roshan Paras­ram were now look­ing at stricter mea­sures to man­age bar op­er­a­tions.

“Be­cause the free for all has the po­ten­tial of tak­ing this coun­try back to where it was three months ago and we can’t al­low that,” Deyals­ingh said.

“We just heard the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance say how many hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars that the tax­pay­ers are spend­ing in all of these types of re­lief but we can’t let one sec­tor of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty op­er­ate in such a way that will do two things—one, send us back to where we were three months ago, have more peo­ple un­em­ployed, put more strain on the health care sys­tem.

“So in clos­ing, I am ask­ing bar own­ers and pa­trons to man­age your op­er­a­tions. I am ask­ing pa­trons to ex­er­cise some cau­tion but we are go­ing to be look­ing, we have start­ed al­ready from to­day, to see what spe­cial reg­u­la­tions we can put in to man­age the op­er­a­tions of bars and to cur­tail the type of be­hav­iour we are see­ing in bars, it is very dis­turb­ing.”

Not­ing that bar own­ers had ad­vo­cat­ing for their busi­ness­es to re­open cit­ing the loss of in­come and jobs, he said it was now dis­ap­point­ing to see such ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour.

“We don’t, as the Min­istry of Health have to rec­om­mend the shut­ting down of bars, we don’t, but to pro­tect the health of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple, if bar own­er and pa­trons keep do­ing this it may be some­thing we may have to look at, to shut­down bars again.

“But we don’t want to do that we just ask peo­ple in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty and health to be­have re­spon­si­bly. This is my ap­peal to bar own­ers and pa­trons.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so sep­a­rate­ly warned bar own­ers that they may be shut down again by to­mor­row if they do not abide by COVID-19 health reg­u­la­tions.

“What is go­ing on out­side of T&T is fright­en­ing. If it ever goes on like that in this coun­try we will be in big trou­ble. Coun­tries that thought that they had passed the worst and had re­opened busi­ness are now clos­ing them back,” Row­ley said dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s launch of the Lin­ear Ac­cel­er­a­tor (LINAC) wing of the St James Med­ical Com­plex.

“There are two bs and one is bor­ders, which must be tight­ly man­aged and the oth­er is bars, which will be closed by Mon­day if the re­ports com­ing to me are the same re­ports that came to me last night. Peo­ple have re­opened bars and are do­ing ex­act­ly what we asked them not to do. What is hap­pen­ing now is the en­vi­ron­ment to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty spread.”

Row­ley said to pre­vent T&T from end­ing up like oth­er coun­tries, they may have to pre­vent peo­ple from tak­ing a drink at bars. How­ev­er, he called on bar own­ers and cit­i­zens to be “re­spon­si­ble” to pre­serve the low rates of COVID-19 the coun­try has man­aged to achieve.

He said he will al­so ask the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­force the reg­u­la­tions.

Nari's own­er: I can't con­trol crowd out­side

The own­er of Nari’s on D Av­enue in Barataria Ram­s­ingh “Nari” Lal­la has ad­mit­ted that one of the videos cir­cu­lat­ing show­ing non-com­pli­ance with COVID-19 pro­to­cols was at his premis­es.

How­ev­er, Lal­la said Sat­ur­day that the crowd was lim­ing out­side his es­tab­lish­ment and he had no con­trol over them. He said in­side, his bar they ob­served the COVID-19 pro­to­cols. Even be­fore COVID-19, he said peo­ple would come with their cool­ers and lime on the out­side be­cause they liked the am­biance. “There were crowds in oth­er bars in Barataria and through­out Trinidad. If you talk to pop­u­lar bar own­ers they will tell you that the crowd is out­side,” Lal­la.

He said he felt his bar was be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed. “It is a clear case of vic­tim­i­sa­tion. I don’t see what I do­ing is dif­fer­ent from every­body else,” he said.

With­in his es­tab­lish­ment, he said they were prac­tic­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, prop­er san­i­ta­tion and all the oth­er guide­lines.

“It is all about sav­ing lives. I am not say­ing that the peo­ple on the out­side were in com­pli­ance but I have no con­trol out­side the build­ing.” He said he was al­so not hap­py that so­cial me­dia users were com­ment­ing on­ly on his bar and post­ing his pho­to.

Bar as­so­ci­a­tion boss re­sponds

Bar Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Teron Mo­han on Sat­ur­day begged Health Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh not to al­low the ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour of a few re­sult in an­oth­er na­tion­al shut­down of bars.

“I would like the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to know that the in­ac­tion, or in­abil­i­ty, or the out­right ig­nor­ing of the guide­lines and law by the se­lect few should not have an over­all ef­fect on the oth­ers who are do­ing what we need to be do­ing in ac­cor­dance with the guide­lines and the law,” Mo­han said he was just as dis­turbed when he saw the video of the bar in North Trinidad with the ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I want the Min­is­ter to know that we con­demn these ac­tions. I have been work­ing tire­less­ly lead­ing up to the open­ing and as well as we have been very metic­u­lous to mon­i­tor crowd con­trol, mon­i­tor per­sons sani­tis­ing be­fore en­ter­ing...”

He ad­mit­ted he was not sure whether the own­er of the bar in North Trinidad was one of his 300 mem­bers. How­ev­er, he ap­pealed to his mem­bers and oth­er bar op­er­a­tors to ad­here to the health guide­lines and reg­u­la­tions to not on­ly en­sure that their busi­ness­es re­main open but to pro­tect them­selves, their cus­tomers and the coun­try.

Mo­han ad­mit­ted that they have not yet been able to put a sys­tem in place to mon­i­tor the ac­tiv­i­ties of var­i­ous bars to en­sure com­pli­ance. But he said he will be mak­ing at­tempts to con­tact Deyals­ingh to of­fer his as­sis­tance to find a way to en­sure bar own­ers and pa­trons fol­low the COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

He said the in­dus­try has been hard hit, with al­most half of it dec­i­mat­ed and many jobs had been lost.

“An­oth­er clo­sure will have an­oth­er big im­pact on the in­dus­try. On­ly now we are see­ing some ac­tiv­i­ty and even now many bar own­ers are not see­ing the kind of ac­tiv­i­ty pre-COVID-19. Bills need to be paid. We are not see­ing com­mu­ni­ty spread so there’s no rea­son to com­pare us to oth­er coun­tries,” he said.

Some of the ex­ist­ing guide­lines are that bars open from 8 am to 10 pm with 50 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, staff must wear prop­er per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, pa­trons must sani­tise be­fore en­ter­ing the es­tab­lish­ments and ta­bles must be spaced at six feet with no more than ten peo­ple to a ta­ble.