Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions are be­ing called in­to ques­tion by the Op­po­si­tion af­ter what it de­scribed as “hypocrisy”, as some Car­ni­val events ap­pear to be­come po­ten­tial su­per-spread­er events.

The point was raised by Op­po­si­tion chief whip and Point-a-Pierre MP David Lee at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“I hap­pened to pass out­side Queen’s Hall and a big fete present­ly is tak­ing place... peo­ple with no mask, no so­cial dis­tanc­ing,” he said.

“And yet the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions is ask­ing fam­i­lies if you’re trav­el­ling in your car, more than one in­di­vid­ual, if you’re a cou­ple or your fam­i­ly is with you, you must wear your mask even though you are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in that ve­hi­cle. Some­thing has to be wrong with this gov­ern­ment and the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.”

He al­so cit­ed the reg­u­la­tions which lim­it re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions to keep­ing ser­vice with­in 90 min­utes “yet in Queen’s Hall car park you have hun­dreds of peo­ple par­ty­ing.”

He al­so cit­ed nu­mer­ous events with­in re­cent days where videos sur­faced of par­ty­go­ers who weren’t ad­her­ing to so­cial dis­tanc­ing or mask-wear­ing pro­to­cols.

“I do not know how they are not break­ing the health pro­to­cols but in­no­cent peo­ple dri­ving in their cars, their face­masks might be slight­ly down and po­lice stop them and want to give them a tick­et,” Lee said.

This, he de­scribed as “hypocrisy by this gov­ern­ment and those pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions”.

“I want to ask the CMO (Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer), how does he feel about what he’s see­ing and wit­ness­ing and I have not heard a word from the CMO about what’s hap­pen­ing in the sa­van­nah over the last four or three days,” he said.

For­mer UNC sen­a­tor Sean Sobers al­so chimed in with an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence that high­light­ed their po­si­tion.

“It’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly dis­heart­en­ing and con­fus­ing that a fete could re­al­ly and tru­ly be hap­pen­ing right around the cor­ner from where we are now but when the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, the women’s arm of the par­ty writes the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to have a peace­ful march in Debe, we are de­nied the abil­i­ty to so do be­cause we are un­der this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” he said.

“But as MP Lee would have in­di­cat­ed, fete, wine and jam could be hap­pen­ing down the road but peace­ful protest - you don’t want that. Make it make sense and that is what we have been ask­ing for...it can­not be there is one rule for per­sons to fete and par­ty and lime but peo­ple who want to hold a peace­ful protest are be­ing de­nied the abil­i­ty.”

The UNC’s view is not unique as many cit­i­zens have al­so point­ed out the ap­par­ent dou­ble stan­dard on so­cial me­dia since the events be­gan.

Com­ment­ing un­der a video of peo­ple cross­ing the stage at a con­cert in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sat­ur­day night, one per­son said: “My kids have to wear masks when we are dri­ving any­where... We have to eat in our cars in the car parks, cuz the food court chairs are chained up... for the sake of health pro­to­cols... yet every night, we see per­sons fet­ing with masks off... What good for one must be good for all... Re­move the mask man­dates and al­low din­ing NOW!”

Peo­ple al­so point­ed out that while these events are be­ing at­tend­ed by ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, there is still the threat of trans­mit­ting the virus.

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly through so­cial me­dia, al­most syn­ony­mous with the emer­gence of sim­i­lar videos of pro­to­cols al­leged­ly be­ing breached at events.

How­ev­er, while po­lice have been present at these events no charges were laid.

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