Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, re­li­gious groups say less peo­ple had been at­tend­ing ser­vices.

How­ev­er, now that there are no more re­stric­tions on the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed at places of wor­ship, sev­er­al re­li­gious groups are hop­ing more peo­ple will at­tend.

Sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Vi­jay Ma­haraj, said de­spite places of wor­ship be­ing al­lowed to op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, there weren’t many peo­ple show­ing up.

“Our full ca­pac­i­ty in tem­ple is any­where be­tween 250 and 300 and we have not had that kind of num­bers turn­ing out ob­vi­ous­ly, and we will open, yes, but I do not fore­see for the next month or two reach­ing that kind of ca­pac­i­ty again,” Ma­haraj said.

Imam Im­ti­az Ali, of Re­al Street AS­JA Masjid, said he too made a sim­i­lar ob­ser­va­tion.

“Some peo­ple are stay­ing away for their own pro­tec­tion to not be ex­posed to any­one else so, yes, there has been a slight drop with the num­ber of at­ten­dees,” Ali said.

The Pres­by­ter­ian Church of T&T said its mem­bers have al­so no­ticed a re­duc­tion in its con­gre­ga­tions.

Go­ing for­ward, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Michael Coop­er Ochiengh not­ed that mem­bers in­tend to con­tin­ue stream­ing re­li­gious cer­e­monies vir­tu­al­ly.

“Cer­tain church­es may not open up on a case-by-case ba­sis. If there are places of wor­ship where per­sons are ill be­cause of COVID, the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions will have to take place so they will con­tin­ue with the vir­tu­al ser­vices and re­al­ly go­ing for­ward it will be a case of hav­ing both,” he said.

Ali said at his Masjid, vac­ci­nat­ed mem­bers are seat­ed away from those who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

Ma­haraj said while the re­lax­ing of re­stric­tions was a wel­comed an­nounce­ment, the SDMS is sur­prised by the tim­ing of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment.

“My con­cern is like a num­ber of oth­er per­sons we had this so-called, ‘Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence’ last week Mon­day and Tues­day so I would have liked to have wait­ed an­oth­er cou­ple of weeks be­fore we went full steam ahead,” Ma­haraj said.

The re­li­gious groups said they will con­tin­ue to do what is need­ed to en­cour­age peo­ple to at­tend ser­vices phys­i­cal­ly with­out jeop­ar­dis­ing the health and safe­ty of their con­gre­ga­tions.

Fur­ther­more, Ma­haraj and Ali said they are hop­ing the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to fade away so that mem­bers can, fi­nal­ly, cel­e­brate larg­er re­li­gious fes­ti­vals such as Ganesh Ut­sav, Di­vali and Eid ul Fitr.

The re­li­gious groups al­so ex­pressed re­lief that the num­ber of peo­ple per­mit­ted at grave­side fu­ner­al ser­vices will be un­re­strict­ed. (BG)