Po­lice yes­ter­day stopped the sale of cooked food at a lo­ca­tion in­side the Food Gi­ant Su­per­mar­ket in Barataria.

The food was be­ing sold in the gro­cery, which is al­lowed to re­main open as an es­sen­tial ser­vice.

While po­lice did not pub­licly state the rea­sons for the shut­down, the lat­est reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it the sale of food at restau­rants and street out­lets to avoid the con­gre­ga­tion of peo­ple.

The reg­u­la­tions are not clear on the sale of food in­side gro­ceries.

The man­age­ment of the gro­cery was not avail­able for com­ment.

Mean­while, the pub­lic is be­ing warned to stop search­ing for loop­holes in the new pub­lic health or­di­nance, as one Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter says it is im­pos­si­ble for each pro­hib­it­ed act to be spelt out in the new law.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, said cit­i­zens must un­der­stand why these laws are be­ing en­forced.

She urged cit­i­zens not to en­gage in ‘smart­man­ism.’

“It is sim­ply un­rea­son­able to ex­pect that as leg­is­la­tors, in reg­u­la­tions such as this, for us to con­tem­plate and cap­ture each and every sce­nario, but what we trust is that good sense would al­ways pre­vail,” Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal told Guardian Me­dia.

Sagram­s­ingh–Sook­lal ad­mit­ted that the le­gal no­tice in­tro­duced last year when the coun­try went in­to lock­down for the first time, was more re­stric­tive than this ver­sion of the law. She said more ser­vices are al­lowed un­der the new law, as the fo­cus is on the re­tail sec­tor with the in­ten­tion of re­strict­ing con­gre­ga­tions and un­nec­es­sary move­ment of peo­ple.

“I would want the gen­er­al pub­lic to pay at­ten­tion to the ra­tio­nales be­hind these reg­u­la­tions which is, in essence, to stay at home and save lives and for us to try to stop find­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cir­cum­vent the in­ten­tion of the leg­is­la­tion,” Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal told Guardian Me­dia af­ter be­ing asked if there is any part of the reg­u­la­tions that the pub­lic should pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to.

Adding to that, she said the new reg­u­la­tions are ‘noth­ing sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent from the April 2020 reg­u­la­tions.’

Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal re­it­er­at­ed that those found in con­tra­ven­tion of the reg­u­la­tions set out for re­tail stores face a hefty fine of $250,000 or six months im­pris­on­ment.

The lat­est le­gal no­tice, pub­lished yes­ter­day, list­ed the re­tail busi­ness­es that would be al­lowed to op­er­ate un­til May 23.

Among the ques­tions asked by mem­bers of the pub­lic was why stores that fa­cil­i­tate the sale of re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tems were al­lowed to re­main open, but the same did not ap­ply to fur­ni­ture stores, de­spite re­frig­er­a­tors be­ing sold there.