BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Founder of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Restau­rant Week, Shi­ra Mo­hammed be­lieves the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­bar the sale of al­co­hol at restau­rants even as in-house din­ing re­sumes, was a strat­a­gem to pre­vent restau­rants from turn­ing in­to bars.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said, “I hon­est­ly think the de­ci­sion to keep al­co­hol as a ban even when re­sum­ing in-house din­ing is re­al­ly to min­imise the sale of al­co­hol or en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to turn restau­rants in­to bars.”

At the same time, how­ev­er, Mo­hammed ac­knowl­edged the an­guish of bar op­er­a­tors.

“If bars are un­able to open it is very sad be­cause that’s an en­tire in­dus­try. I mean every cor­ner of Trinidad and To­ba­go has a rum shop and de­pend on the sale of al­co­hol and Trinida­di­ans love to con­sume al­co­hol, so it is re­al­ly part of our cul­ture and it is re­al­ly un­for­tu­nate,” she re­lat­ed.

Mo­hammed was grate­ful how­ev­er that the de­ci­sion not to restart gath­er­ings at bars did not af­fect the open­ing of restau­rants.

Speak­ing on the re­sump­tion of in-house din­ing be­ing per­mit­ted again, Mo­hammed said she was hap­py it was hap­pen­ing and the au­thor­i­ties de­cid­ed on it.

She said the re­con­ven­ing of in-house din­ing would as­sist the restau­rant in­dus­try, which was in dire need of as­sis­tance hav­ing suf­fered great fi­nan­cial loss over the months due to the pan­dem­ic—some even forced to close down.

Dur­ing an ad­dress at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, Row­ley an­nounced the ad­di­tion­al ease to re­stric­tions which formed health mea­sures in place to curb fur­ther spread of COVID-19 in T&T.

Among sev­er­al re­stric­tions lift­ed were in house din­ing which would now op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty with no sale or serv­ings of al­co­hol. Gath­er­ings of ten are per­mit­ted but on­ly with phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols in­tact.

Food can be now pur­chased and con­sumed at cin­e­mas, which are charged to on­ly op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. While peo­ple of their re­spec­tive faith could fel­low­ship for 90 min­utes in­stead of an hour.

Train­ing re­sumes for sport­ing teams qual­i­fy­ing for both na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events. Al­lowed on­ly are team sup­port groups lim­it­ed to ten per­sons and Caribbean Air­lines al­lowed in­creas­ing flights for do­mes­tic trav­el with COVID-19 pro­to­cols in ef­fect.