Lo­cal busi­ness cham­bers have in­di­cat­ed their sup­port for Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­tro­duce “safe zones”, which will al­low for the re­open­ing of many en­ter­tain­ment and recre­ation­al spaces across the coun­try.

In the joint state­ment is­sued to­day, the Joint Cham­bers note such a move makes it pos­si­ble for the coun­try to live with the pan­dem­ic, and they al­so en­cour­age cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19 as the Delta Vari­ant con­tin­ues to make its pres­ence felt among the pop­u­la­tion.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by the Joint Cham­bers…

AM­CHAM T&T, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Trinidad & To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and Trinidad & To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (the Joint Cham­bers) warm­ly wel­come the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment of the in­tro­duc­tion of “safe zones” to al­low the re­open­ing of restau­rants, bars, cin­e­mas, gyms, casi­nos and oth­er sim­i­lar es­tab­lish­ments. The an­nounced mea­sures will help pro­tect the health of both cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees, as the coun­try con­tin­ues to roll­out the na­tion­al COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme. Fur­ther, such a mea­sure would al­low cit­i­zens to re­cov­er af­ter a pe­ri­od of not earn­ing reg­u­lar in­comes over the last few months.

Sim­i­lar mea­sures have been in­tro­duced in many coun­tries re­gion­al­ly and across the world, as we col­lec­tive­ly learn to live in a COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment. Many coun­tries in Eu­rope and Asia have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed sim­i­lar na­tion­al mea­sures to pro­tect pub­lic health, while in the USA and Cana­da sim­i­lar poli­cies have been in­tro­duced at city, state and/or provin­cial lev­els. With­in the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, Guyana and Be­lize have al­ready im­ple­ment­ed reg­u­la­tions re­quir­ing all vis­i­tors to pub­lic build­ings be vac­ci­nat­ed, while An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has man­dat­ed vac­ci­na­tions for all pub­lic ser­vants, pub­lic trans­port dri­vers and many oth­er peo­ple in­ter­act­ing with the pub­lic.

Mem­bers of the Joint Cham­bers and the wider pri­vate-sec­tor have worked in close part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment to roll-out the mass vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme over the past few months and to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the im­por­tance of vac­ci­na­tion as a high pri­or­i­ty. The ma­jor­i­ty of our em­ploy­ees and many oth­er cit­i­zens have been vac­ci­nat­ed in es­tab­lish­ments run by the pri­vate-sec­tor, and busi­ness­es are con­tin­u­ing to as­sist the Min­istry of Health in the roll-out of the cur­rent com­mu­ni­ty-based vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes. There has been an un­prece­dent­ed pro­gramme of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship in the ef­forts to pro­tect lives through vac­ci­na­tions.

The Joint Cham­bers com­mit to con­tin­u­ing this part­ner­ship with gov­ern­ment in this new phase of the bat­tle against COVID-19, as we im­ple­ment the “safe zones” poli­cies. The Joint Cham­bers know that we all need to con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er to move our Re­pub­lic for­ward and to­ward the con­tin­ued eas­ing of re­stric­tions. In this re­gard, we urge all cit­i­zens—vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed—to con­tin­ue to prac­tice re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour by wear­ing masks, so­cial­ly dis­tanc­ing and san­i­tiz­ing fre­quent­ly.

We al­so take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­peal to cit­i­zens to fol­low the sci­ence and get vac­ci­nat­ed. T&T is in the for­tu­nate po­si­tion of hav­ing vac­cine choice at a time when many coun­tries around the world have no ac­cess to vac­cines. With the Delta vari­ant present in the pop­u­la­tion, vac­ci­na­tion is the safest way to pro­tect against se­vere ill­ness and the need for hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.

We are all in this to­geth­er and once again reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to do­ing our part to com­bat the ef­fects of this dead­ly dis­ease.