Mem­bers of the pub­lic who are tra­di­tion­al­ly ac­cus­tomed to vis­it­ing pro­duce mar­kets every week­end are now be­ing asked to stag­ger their ar­rival times to these fa­cil­i­ties in an at­tempt to min­imise the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pub­lic is be­ing asked to com­ply with the safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures that have been in­tro­duced. This in­cludes wash­ing hands thor­ough­ly be­fore en­ter­ing the fa­cil­i­ties and us­ing hand san­i­tiz­er be­fore pro­ceed­ing to ven­dors’ stalls.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day as he ap­pealed to the pub­lic to fol­low the re­vised reg­u­la­tions, Tu­na­puna MP Es­mond Forde said the mea­sures are nec­es­sary in or­der to pro­tect the ven­dors, shop­pers and cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees at work.

In­ter­fac­ing with the pub­lic who were lin­ing up as they await­ed their turn to en­ter the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket, Forde urged them to be pa­tient and fol­low the in­struc­tions of mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers and the TTPS.

“We ba­si­cal­ly closed the gates of the mar­ket so there is on­ly one en­trance point,” Forde said, point­ing to a gate low­er down from the east­ern-fac­ing en­trance, which he said was the des­ig­nat­ed ex­it point.

Point­ing to the long line of shop­pers, he ex­plained, “We asked peo­ple to join the line, keep their dis­tance with­in the line to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing, wash their hands at one of the two taps in­stalled just in­side the en­trance and fur­ther sani­tise be­fore you be­gin to shop.”

Asked how they were man­ag­ing the in­creas­ing num­bers, he said, “We are reg­u­lat­ing the num­bers and are on­ly try­ing to send in 25 per­sons at a time, based on the square footage of the mar­ket.”

He ad­mit­ted there were some con­sumers com­plain­ing about the de­lay but ad­vised, “This is for your own good.”

The Tu­na­puna Mar­ket opened at 5 am yes­ter­day and the crowd was said to be fair­ly thick ini­tial­ly. But Forde asked shop­pers to re­con­sid­er their op­tions.

“Is it nec­es­sary that you must go to a mar­ket to get your goods on a Sat­ur­day or Sun­day?

“There are a lot of road­side ven­dors, even though at this time, they may be con­sid­ered il­le­gal…I am say­ing you can use those ven­dors on the high­ways, bi-ways and side streets, even the guy op­er­at­ing a busi­ness un­der his house, utilise those rather than com­ing to the mar­ket.”

Forde al­so ap­pealed to shop­pers to dis­pose of their pro­tec­tive gloves and masks im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­turn­ing home and to wash their cloth­ing and pro­duce with bleach to en­sure the virus is not spread.

Asked if they would ex­tend the phys­i­cal area where ven­dors op­er­ate, he said that dis­cus­sion had al­ready been had with cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials.

Forde said, “Dur­ing the week, the mar­ket would not be as crowd­ed and I am think­ing they can now bring out about one-third of the ven­dors on to the street and close it off to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic, so it would cre­ate a wider space and more free­dom for shop­pers.”

He re­it­er­at­ed, “This virus thrives among crowds so we have to be sen­si­ble and do the right thing…wash our hands, sani­tise, do the prop­er things.”

It was a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion at the Ari­ma Mar­ket, as po­lice of­fi­cers were seen di­rect­ing shop­pers to wash and sani­tise their hands be­fore en­ter­ing the fa­cil­i­ty. Sev­er­al of­fi­cials said they opened at the usu­al 5 am and while there were anx­ious crowds, the pub­lic ob­served the new rules with­out any fuss.

It was a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion at the Cen­tral Mar­ket, Port-of-Spain, as May­or Joel Mar­tinez re­vealed they had im­posed a one-hour shop­ping time for cus­tomers. He said al­though they too opened at 5 am, of­fi­cials on­ly al­lowed up to 150 peo­ple on the com­pound at one time as it is a fair­ly large space, so the ven­dors and shop­pers were not in close prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er.

Mar­tinez said, “Up­on en­try, you are re­quired to sani­tise your hands and then go on to shop.”

He said shop­pers were giv­en a colour-cod­ed band rep­re­sent­ing spe­cif­ic hour-long shop­ping blocks, so it was easy for of­fi­cials to iden­ti­fy per­sons who had over-stayed their time. This sys­tem was in­tro­duced in a bid to en­sure that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble were able to ac­cess the mar­ket.

Hav­ing closed their gates at 10 am yes­ter­day, Mar­tinez said there were a few peo­ple who did not re­alise a new sys­tem had been im­ple­ment­ed. All mar­kets are sched­uled to open at 5 am to­day.

Se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cers were ex­pect­ed to meet with cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials yes­ter­day to dis­cuss how the lat­est sys­tems had worked and what would be the plan mov­ing ahead.