To­bag­o­ni­ans have start­ed stock­ing up on cel­lu­lar phones, ra­dios, flour and bread.

Mo­hammed Nasir Ud­din, who op­er­ates Mum­taz En­ter­pris­es at the Gulf City Mall, Low­lands, said cus­tomers had start­ed ac­quir­ing phones, ca­bles, bat­ter­ies, ra­dios and oth­er avail­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices.

Ud­din said peo­ple were fear­ing the worst since To­ba­go was a small is­land whose um­bil­i­cal cord was at­tached to Trinidad.

He said in the last few days, cus­tomers had been rush­ing to pur­chase these items since they do not know how long the re­stric­tions re­gard­ing COVID-19 would last and when the virus would go away.

Ud­din said he had a few cell­phones in stock and was not ex­pect­ing any sup­plies in the near fu­ture since his chain of sup­ply was di­rect­ly out of New York in the Unit­ed States.

He said the store re­mained with a few elec­tron­ics and many phone cas­es.

He said staff may have to be sent home un­til the goods could be shipped to T&T.

Ud­din said the man­age­ment of the mall had not yet spo­ken with ten­ants as to the waiv­er or re­duc­tion of rent un­til their busi­ness­es re­gained their foot­ing.

The sus­pen­sion of the sail­ing of the Cabo Star ear­li­er this week left some To­bag­o­ni­ans in pan­ic.

He said in­di­vid­u­als be­gan stock­ing up on Kiss Bread that is shipped from Trinidad on the Cabo Star and dis­trib­uted in To­ba­go.

Oth­ers he said, re­vealed they were tak­ing no chances and pur­chas­ing flour to en­sure there was enough to eat.