KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

De­spite state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) drop­ping Blue Wa­ters from its flights, some of the coun­try’s biggest re­tail­ers say it is busi­ness as usu­al, re­port­ing no de­cline in cus­tomer de­mand and no plans to stop sell­ing the lo­cal bot­tled wa­ter brand fol­low­ing the de­ten­tion of its own­ers.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Trot­ters’ chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Pe­ter George said the com­pa­ny has had no talks about re­mov­ing Blue Wa­ters from its shelves.

George said cus­tomers con­tin­ue to buy Blue Wa­ters prod­ucts, and Trot­ters con­tin­ues to stock and sell them.

George said, “There’s been ab­solute­ly no change or even a de­ci­sion that was dis­cussed with re­gards to re­mov­ing Blue Wa­ters from any of our busi­ness­es. Every­thing re­mains ex­act­ly the same as of now and quite frankly, I think it is a bizarre ques­tion to be asked. We con­tin­ue to sell Blue Wa­ters. Our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to buy Blue Wa­ters and there is no con­fla­tion of the two is­sues as far as my busi­ness or my cus­tomers are con­cerned. At least we have not seen that in the last week or two. Blue Wa­ters has been or­dered as nor­mal. Peo­ple walk­ing out of the restau­rant with Blue Wa­ters as nor­mal. We’re sell­ing it as nor­mal. It’s the on­ly bot­tled wa­ter that we sell at Trot­ters and that con­tin­ues.”

On Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that af­ter 15-plus years of serv­ing Blue Wa­ters on its flights, CAL stopped serv­ing the prod­uct, re­plac­ing it with Dasani wa­ter in­stead.

The air­line con­firmed the de­ci­sion via a re­lease and said the change forms part of Caribbean Air­lines’ on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme, which is fo­cused on im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and sup­port­ing the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the air­line.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the de­ci­sion to s witch wa­ter brands came from the board, which is chaired by Rey­na Kow­lessar.

On June 24, Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed’s own­ers, Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, were ar­rest­ed by po­lice. Their ar­rests came al­most two weeks af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed a warn­ing by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent,” was be­yond the reach of the law.

At present, no charges have been laid against the cou­ple held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs).

Asked about busi­ness­es boy­cotting Blue Wa­ters, George said if oth­er busi­ness­es choose to stop car­ry­ing the brand, “that’s up to them.”

He added, “Those who de­cide to do that, well, they’re well with­in their rights to do what­ev­er it is they want to do. But, as far as we’re con­cerned, it is busi­ness as usu­al with re­gards to Blue Wa­ters, and those who choose to cease and de­sist from us­ing the prod­uct, well, they’re with­in their right to do so … It is in­dica­tive of where we are as a coun­try and the di­vi­sions of the coun­try. In­stead of us be­com­ing uni­fied as each day go­ing by, the coun­try be­comes more di­vid­ed.”

Mean­while, Star­lite Shop­ping Plaza CEO Ger­ald Aboud voiced sup­port for the com­pa­ny, de­scrib­ing Blue Wa­ters as “a very good prod­uct” and say­ing he in­tends to con­tin­ue sell­ing it.

Aboud said, “Of course we will sup­port them be­cause that’s what peo­ple want. No drop in sales. Peo­ple like the wa­ter. It’s a na­tion­al brand. They sup­port it. They trust it and I don’t think that’s go­ing to change. They’ve built up a good name for them­selves over the years. They’ve done good work. They’ve been good op­er­a­tors, so peo­ple are loy­al to the brand, so we’ll stick with that.”

Aboud al­so crit­i­cised the “one per cent” nar­ra­tive that has emerged in re­cent pub­lic dis­course, say­ing he does not like hear­ing the term be­cause he be­lieves it is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry.

Aboud added, “I don’t re­al­ly like to hear the one per cent talk be­cause our con­sti­tu­tion states that we don’t dis­crim­i­nate, so if we have any group that is say­ing that a one per cent is a mem­ber of the Arab com­mu­ni­ty, then that is a form of dis­crim­i­na­tion. It’s not nice to be dis­crim­i­nat­ed up­on.”

Last month, Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus has been ex­tend­ed to gangs, in­clud­ing those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the “one per cent,” which has been used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­served Blue Wa­ters be­ing sold via vend­ing ma­chines and cas­es of Blue Wa­ters for staff at some Gov­ern­ment min­istries, de­spite ru­mours of a boy­cott by the Gov­ern­ment.

Staff at these min­istries could not con­firm whether or not it would be re­stocked.