Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his con­fi­dence in the cit­i­zen­ry to ad­here to pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions has not been mis­placed. And he is en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to ex­er­cise cau­tion and re­straint as he an­nounced a fur­ther eas­ing of re­stric­tions this week.

Dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley gave the green light for the lim­it­ed re­sump­tion of in-house din­ing at restau­rants mi­nus the sale of al­co­hol; the sale of con­sum­ables at cin­e­mas; per­mis­sion for teams prepar­ing for na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing events to re­sume train­ing; the ex­ten­sion of re­li­gious wor­ship hours to 90 min­utes; and more flights on the do­mes­tic air-bridge.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

Suzanne Sheppard

While rivers and ponds and wa­ter parks have to re­main closed for an­oth­er two weeks, the prime min­is­ter said it was nec­es­sary to en­sure the health sys­tem was not overwhelmed mov­ing for­ward as cer­tain sec­tors of the econ­o­my are opened up again.

Re­view­ing the mea­sures Gov­ern­ment had been forced to im­ple­ment as the lock­down be­gan in March, he said, “Our coun­try is one of the few coun­tries in the world that is open­ing up and go­ing back to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy.”

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged the risk this pre­sent­ed as he said coun­tries that had done that, had re­vert­ed to even harsh­er lock­downs now as their in­fec­tion rates surged.

Dis­miss­ing the naysay­ers and their bleak pre­dic­tions for the fu­ture as Gov­ern­ment slow­ly rolled back re­stric­tions, Row­ley said, “What is rel­e­vant to the peo­ple of T&T is to stay alive, stay healthy and every­thing else is sec­ondary.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by the sci­ence of the virus and what health of­fi­cials ad­vised, as they did not want to have to throw away the gains so far achieved.

Row­ley said, “I know that hurt is be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the few sec­tors that have re­mained closed or re­main re­strict­ed.”

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

He said this was mi­nus­cule when com­pared to the scale and numbers of peo­ple who would be af­fect­ed if we have to re­turn to the sit­u­a­tion we were in back in April.

Mea­sures which re­mained un­changed in­clud­ed the “grab and go” sale of al­co­hol at bars; no food or drinks to be served in casi­nos and mem­bers clubs; maxi-taxis and taxis to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing at 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty; ed­u­ca­tion, recre­ation­al and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tors re­main closed.

Ad­dress­ing an­gry bar own­ers, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment did not have any­thing against beers and rum which was still avail­able for sale. He said the de­ter­rent was the con­gre­ga­tion which of­ten oc­curred wher­ev­er al­co­hol is served.

"Al­co­hol has shown and been shown to be one of the con­trib­u­tors to the re­sults that we don't want where peo­ple con­sume al­co­hol and it re­duces their lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

"For now, we re­quire a high­er lev­el of sus­tained re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

BOX

1. In-house din­ing at restau­rants al­lowed at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty and no al­co­hol to be served (seat­ing groups must not ex­ceed ten and must be so­cial­ly dis­tanced);

2. Con­sum­ables can be sold at cin­e­mas which will op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty;

3. Sport­ing teams prepar­ing for na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events can re­sume train­ing (no spec­ta­tor groups al­lowed and team sup­port groups must not ex­ceed ten);

4. In­creased flights by Caribbean Air­lines (so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols ap­ply); and

5. Ex­ten­sion of hours for places of wor­ship from one hour to 90 min­utes.