Gov­ern­ment is ask­ing banks and land­lords to de­fer cer­tain as­pect of pay­ments from peo­ple who may be un­able to pay or who may have lost their job due to the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis.

“It’s not for­give­ness of the debt, on­ly de­fer­ral,” Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said at Mon­day’s me­dia brief­ing on the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

“We’re say­ing to the banks, we’re all in this to­geth­er and to­geth­er­ness will make this task eas­i­er,” he added.

While Gov­ern­ment was han­dling its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties on the cri­sis, he added it can’t be a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion for all else.

In the pri­vate sec­tor, he said, there will be “op­por­tu­ni­ty and re­quire­ment.”

“We’ll ask them to make de­fer­ral on some as­pect of pay­ments for those un­able to pay as a re­sult of the virus. We’ll al­so ask banks if, in an emer­gency, the same can be done re­gard­ing cred­it card in­ter­est.”

Sim­i­lar re­quests for emer­gency help will be made to land­lords where ten­ants have lost their jobs.

“Ex­perts tell us we could be in this sit­u­a­tion go­ing in­to June and the im­me­di­ate ef­fects could take us in­to Oc­to­ber,” he not­ed.

Row­ley said in re­cent days he’d been talk­ing to peo­ple with their “hands on the econ­o­my’s lever.” He said he’d seen a good sign with some restau­rants’ ope­ness to pro­vid­ing free meals for needy peo­ple.

He added that the so­cial­ly dis­placed, who were par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble, pose a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge in the COVID cri­sis and this was an area where the pri­vate sec­tor, NGOs and oth­ers can as­sist with.

But he ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with those still run­ning cer­tain places of wor­ship de­spite the call against con­gre­gat­ing.

“Some peo­ple be­lieve they have a pipeline to heav­en and God knows them per­son­al­ly— that won’t save you from the virus. Let’s not con­gre­gate: iso­late, sep­a­rate, be re­spon­si­ble,” Row­ley said.

He said one of T&T’s strengths in the sit­u­a­tion is the Her­itage/Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. Word on use of the fund will be known ahead but­the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s di­vi­sion is ready in event leg­isla­tive mea­sures are need­ed.

Row­ley ac­cused Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of play­ing pol­i­tics with the cri­sis af­ter she wrote him seek­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the pan­dem­ic. He asked if that was the same Op­po­si­tion Leader who last Fri­day in Par­lia­ment loud­ly vot­ed against his bid to de­liv­er a state­ment on the im­pact of the virus.

“I’m not pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate in any po­lit­i­cal grand­stand­ing, right now I have a se­ri­ous headache. I’m pre­pared to work with any­one in T&T’s in­ter­est but I have no time for games, I have se­ri­ous busi­ness to do for the peo­ple”

Row­ley said if the Op­po­si­tion was will­ing to change from “un­der­min­ers” and work with Gov­ern­ment, his arms were open.

The PM said apart from the An­dean Bank of­fer­ing as­sis­tance, Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to ac­cess even In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund as­sis­tance, but T&T isn’t “go­ing to the IMF.”

—Gail Alexan­der