PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For many in and around San Fer­nan­do, Ris­ing Star was one of the go-to op­tions to eat out and have so­cial drinks.

But with no op­tion to dine in, the pop­u­lar restau­rant has be­come a ghost town.

“Peo­ple don’t want to buy and go home and eat. If you have to buy and go home and eat, bet­ter you cook home,” said the restau­rant’s own­er Chadra­ka Per­sad yes­ter­day.

Man­ag­er Joel Laka­too said at best a hand­ful of peo­ple would come to buy food, on a good day.

“Some­times for the day we might get two cus­tomers. Some­times we might get none. On a week­end we might get five. It all varies. It’s some­thing un­pre­dictable but the curb­side is very slow and the es­tab­lish­ment can’t sur­vive on that. They can’t pay the rent on that. They can’t pay work­ers on that,” said Laka­too.

“I am afraid now at the point in time we don’t know if they will be able to keep the es­tab­lish­ment open if they don’t open back up the restau­rants and bars. There­fore we will be out of a job and the sit­u­a­tion will be even worse,” said Laka­too.

Per­sad owns two restau­rants in San Fer­nan­do. Ris­ing Star’s slow busi­ness is bad news in it­self, but his oth­er restau­rant, Steel, has been closed out­right as it has been tied to nightlife at South Park.

“We try­ing to hold it down over here but Steel, there is more nightlife and that mall is qui­et right now with all the re­stric­tions, so no­body not go­ing to malls. So that busi­ness is closed present­ly. Ris­ing Star, we still do­ing take-out but that isn’t mak­ing any much more mon­ey to pay the rent,” he ad­mits that he’s had sleep­less nights over the lack of busi­ness.

“We have loans to pay too. I have plen­ty loans to pay,” he said.

The con­cerns of the work­ers have been grow­ing as well, as they face their own chal­lenges from land­lords, banks and car­ing for rel­a­tives.

“The bars have been closed since March and cas­es still go­ing up more than ever. It’s just too much, too much to deal with,” said Jew­el Woods, a kitchen as­sis­tant at Ris­ing Star.

“It have a work­er that work­ing here, he catch a stroke, he get evict­ed, he call me told me, at the point in time when he call me, you want to help. If it is (that) I help him the first two weeks or maybe a month...What about the oth­er 7-8 months down the road, will I still be able to main­tain him, when hav­ing a moth­er to main­tain, two kids to main­tain plus who­ev­er fam­i­ly need help in that same house­hold, out of that house­hold who not work­ing?”

Woods said the anx­i­ety faced has on­ly in­creased as for­mer work­ers have al­so been call­ing, seek­ing work, as the op­por­tu­ni­ties all around are scarce.

They’re hop­ing the Prime Min­is­ter gives good news, or at least spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion to restau­rants with open-air spaces like Ris­ing Star so that op­er­a­tions can pick up for them.

“We just want some­thing small. At least a lit­tle is bet­ter than noth­ing.”