Some re­li­gious lead­ers have ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the gov­ern­ment’s lat­est Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions but the Full Gospel and In­de­pen­dent Church­es of T&T has lashed out say­ing the Prime Min­is­ter does not have the spir­i­tu­al au­thor­i­ty to close places of wor­ship.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, spokesper­son Dr Wayne Hay­wood said the church­es were nev­er con­sult­ed and if the reg­u­la­tions are al­lowed to con­tin­ue for the next three weeks, “many church­es will die.”

“It is not fair. We are gov­erned by the laws of the land as it per­tains to how we op­er­ate but when it comes to the spir­i­tu­al as­pect of the church, the Prime Min­is­ter does not have that au­thor­i­ty to close down church­es,” Dr Hay­wood said.

He added, “ None of the spir­i­tu­al lead­ers was con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion was tak­en. The im­pact of this was that as of last year, the church was di­vid­ed. The Church lost mem­ber­ship and some have not re­turned to the church since last year with the last lock­down. It is not fair. I come to­day as David to speak against Go­liath. Or I come as Daniel...Daniel had to de­fy the King’s de­cree when he was told he can­not pray.”

Dr Hay­wood de­nied that the virus has been spread­ing be­cause of ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour in places of wor­ship.

When told that the Ro­man Catholic Church had ad­mit­ted to hav­ing in­fec­tions with­in the con­gre­ga­tion, Dr Hay­wood said, “No, con­gre­gat­ing in a Church is not spread­ing the virus. Con­gre­gat­ing in zess­er par­ties, on the beach is, but not in the Church. The Church is an es­sen­tial ser­vice. Peo­ple come to re­new and re­ju­ve­nate. It is a form of ther­a­py.”

But lead­ers from oth­er places of wor­ship say they will abide by the reg­u­la­tions.

The pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the AS­JA Raf­fa­ic Mo­hammed in a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence told Mus­lims to abide by the lat­est Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions.

“We are cur­rent­ly in the Holy month of Ra­madan. I wish to ad­vise that pub­lic gath­er­ing is not al­lowed by the law. We will abide by these guide­lines as re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens. As such there will be no pub­lic gath­er­ings, masjids are now closed,” Imam Mo­hammed said.

Ad­mit­ting that many Mus­lims were emo­tion­al at this time, Imam Mo­hammed said, “If we re­al­ly care for our masjid and our coun­try, we will spend time in seclu­sion.”

Mean­while, in a Face­book mes­sage to his fold, Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don urged peo­ple to abide by the rules and stay at home.

Say­ing the num­bers re­leased by the gov­ern­ment was “the tip of the ice­berg”, Gor­don said, “There are peo­ple who are in­fect­ing oth­ers. Then we have the Brazil­lian vari­ant. This is the mo­ment when we pull back. Let us not meet for din­ners, birth­day par­ties. Let us hold for now and stay in our lit­tle bub­bles. Let us act to pro­tect each oth­er be­cause we have seen what hap­pened in In­dia.”

The lat­est reg­u­la­tions are in place un­til May 23.