As the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my be­gins to feel the neg­a­tive ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic fall­out, the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to an­nounce ini­tia­tives to pro­vide a source of in­come to those who lose jobs dur­ing this time.

On Fri­day the Par­lia­ment passed the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions which now legal­ly forces bars, clubs, casi­nos, cin­e­mas and mem­bers’ clubs from open­ing and restau­rants and oth­er food busi­ness­es from hav­ing dine-in ser­vices.

Al­ready, there have been re­ports of peo­ple los­ing jobs in these ar­eas, with bars and clubs be­ing the hard­est hit, and oth­er re­lat­ed in­dus­tries. In fact, on­ly on Thurs­day Me­dia 21 Lim­it­ed, which pro­vides au­dio­vi­su­al tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices, sent all of its 21 staff mem­bers on no-pay leave.

Speak­ing on i95.5 FM on Sun­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his Gov­ern­ment is putting things in place for re­trenched work­ers.

“If there are peo­ple who have lost their jobs, for ex­am­ple, if you were work­ing in a bar and you can’t pay your rent be­cause the bar has been shut down to pro­tect the pub­lic, what the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to do is help you get an in­come if you lost your job at the bar.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said fur­ther de­tails will be giv­en at a news con­fer­ence at 2 pm to­day.

Row­ley al­so re­vealed that he has been ad­vised that the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic could last as long as May, or even fur­ther.

As such, he said the Gov­ern­ment will go to Par­lia­ment this week to get ap­proval to draw down from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to get mon­ey to as­sist those in need.

“No­body knows how long this is go­ing to last but it looks as if, with the in­for­ma­tion we have from the epi­demi­ol­o­gists, is that this thing could last well in­to May and then af­ter that, there are some who are say­ing it can go longer than that,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He ad­mit­ted that if the virus’ spread goes on for a long time the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to fund sup­port pro­grammes will be very stressed, not­ing Gov­ern­ment will have to be cau­tions about this process. “We do not have an in­fi­nite amount of mon­ey,” he not­ed.

One of the fall­outs from the re­sponse to the virus’ ar­rival here has been pan­ic buy­ing, which has led to short­ages of some items--par­tic­u­lar­ly clean­ing and sani­tis­ing prod­ucts.

But there have al­so been many com­plaints from cit­i­zens re­gard­ing com­pa­nies that have in­creased prices for those goods, which are crit­i­cal­ly need­ed dur­ing this world­wide emer­gency.

In re­sponse to this, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment has no plans to in­sti­tute price con­trols but in­sist­ed that such ac­tiv­i­ty will be mon­i­tored and guilty busi­ness­es will be made to pay one way or the oth­er.

“The Min­istry of Trade has in­di­cat­ed that we’ll be mon­i­tor­ing price gougers and we will not hes­i­tate in iden­ti­fy­ing them and ask the pop­u­la­tion to boy­cott them.”

He said all hands need to be on deck and that in­cludes the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), whom he ac­cused of play pol­i­tics with the COVID-19 is­sue.

The Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion met on Fri­day to dis­cuss the mat­ter but in the Prime Min­is­ter’s view, it was an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty.

“They brought noth­ing to the ta­ble that was new or that was more valu­able than what all the oth­er doc­tors have giv­en to us.”

He de­scribed the meet­ing as a po­lit­i­cal agen­da of the op­po­si­tion.

In an ap­par­ent break from this, Op­po­si­tion MP Fuad Khan yes­ter­day re­vealed he had vol­un­teered his ser­vices to the COVID-19 fight. (See page 11)

Row­ley main­tained that at this time every stake­hold­er has a part to play if the coun­try is to sur­vive this cri­sis.

He al­so said the gen­er­al elec­tions, which are due this year, were not a pri­or­i­ty at this time.

“You see right now, I am not con­cerned about the pol­i­tics of the next elec­tion, I am con­cerned about keep­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go safe.”

Up to yes­ter­day, T&T had record­ed 50 cas­es of the virus with 306 peo­ple hav­ing been test­ed.