Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Over 100 pri­vate preschools and day­cares have ei­ther closed their doors per­ma­nent­ly or were forced out of the fa­cil­i­ties they once oc­cu­pied and are now search­ing for a way for­ward. That’s ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Child­care Providers group, Nisha Hoyte, who said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has dra­mat­i­cal­ly im­pact­ed their in­dus­try.

Be­ing forced to close since the epi­dem­ic be­gan in T&T, she says the eco­nom­ic fall­out is tak­ing a toll, es­pe­cial­ly since some preschool and day­care own­ers are un­able to ac­cess any of the fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance ser­vices by the Gov­ern­ment.

“It’s a le­git­i­mate busi­ness...I pay tax­es...we’re fol­low­ing the rules the gov­ern­ment has in place for busi­ness­es...we should be af­ford­ed some of the grants and loans the oth­er busi­ness­es are able to get ac­cess to,” Hoyte told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

In June, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that $300 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for soft loans tar­get­ted to as­sist small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es be­ing of­fered through var­i­ous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions such as First Cit­i­zens Bank, NED­CO and cred­it unions. It was part of its plan to cush­ion the eco­nom­ic fall­out from lock­down mea­sures to pro­tect against the spread of the virus. Ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and day­cares have been closed since March.

But ac­cord­ing to Hoyte, busi­ness­es in their line of work is un­able to ac­cess these fa­cil­i­ties.

“One of the re­quire­ments for that (loan of­fered through First Cit­i­zens’ Bank) is that you have to be VAT reg­is­tered. Our ser­vice as child­care providers we can’t reg­is­ter for VAT. It’s not a VAT reg­is­tered type of or­gan­i­sa­tion. It’s not re­quired of us,” she said.

“So even though we pay tax­es and pay tax­es and health sur­charge- be­cause we’re not VAT reg­is­tered...we are un­able to ap­ply for that loan.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said many own­ers were al­so dis­qual­i­fied from ac­cess­ing a $20,000 loan through NED­CO be­cause, dur­ing the ear­ly stages of the pan­dem­ic, they would have ap­plied for oth­er forms of as­sis­tance.

“One of the re­stric­tions of that (loan) is if you would have ap­plied for a food card or a rental as­sis­tance of $3,500 for your home...you can­not ap­ply for that $20,000 grant which would have as­sist­ed some of my col­leagues with pay­ing staff or pay­ing their rent for their busi­ness lo­ca­tions,” she said.

“Be­cause they are not al­lowed to ap­ply for two grants- which was not ad­vised ear­li­er- they are un­able to ap­ply now for that $20,000 grant for their busi­ness.”

She has reached out to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and its Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to meet with her or­gan­i­sa­tion to dis­cuss a way for­ward.

“We don’t think that school is go­ing to be able to re­sume even af­ter this week­end’s brief­ing and we un­der­stand...the Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready stat­ed that schools would not be opened be­fore Jan­u­ary 2021,” she said.

“(We) just want to be able to get some sort of as­sis­tance- not some sort of hand­out. Just to be able to ap­ply for the grants or loans with cer­tain re­stric­tions be­ing re­moved for us.”