PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has slammed so­cial me­dia “grem­lins” whom he said have been at­tempt­ing to cre­ate pan­ic over the COVID-19 virus on the in­ter­net.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed a so­cial me­dia post fea­tur­ing the min­istry’s let­ter­head which sug­gest­ed that phar­ma­cies and su­per­mar­kets would on­ly be al­lowed open on spe­cif­ic days and times.

“I need to ad­dress the usu­al so­cial me­dia Grem­lins that are hard at work­ing try­ing to con­fuse the pop­u­la­tion, spread mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­chief,” Deyals­ingh said.

“Yes­ter­day, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to put out a new reg­u­la­tion which al­lows for the open­ing of hard­wares, elec­tri­cal busi­ness­es and plumb­ing busi­ness­es on a Mon­day, a Thurs­day and a Sat­ur­day from 8 am to 12 noon. Some on so­cial me­dia hi­jacked again the Min­istry of Health’s let­ter­head and then in an ef­fort to cause pan­ic, in­clud­ed phar­ma­cies and gro­ceries. Let me state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, it does not ap­ply to phar­ma­cies and gro­ceries. Cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go will have ac­cess to the full gamut of med­ical care, in­clud­ing phar­ma­cies, will have full ac­cess to food in­clud­ing su­per­mar­kets through­out.”

He said the de­ci­sion to re­duce the al­ready lim­it­ed hours of hard­wares and elec­tri­cal busi­ness­es on Sun­day was in­flu­enced by mem­bers of the pub­lic ven­tur­ing to these busi­ness­es for items and in­ten­tions which were “non-es­sen­tial.”

“What we no­ticed and I think we men­tioned this last week, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and my­self, we mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion on an hourly and dai­ly ba­sis ... Some peo­ple are ig­nor­ing the mea­sures, specif­i­cal­ly with the is­sue of hard­wares, many peo­ple were now go­ing in­to hard­wares to buy paint to paint over their homes and bring work­men in to paint over their homes. That is a clear and present dan­ger to the fam­i­lies liv­ing there. Invit­ing work­men to come in to do non-es­sen­tial re­pairs.”

He added, “Some were say­ing let’s build a garage, this is not the time for that. Vis­it a hard­ware for your emer­gency sup­plies, elec­tri­cal, a pipe burst, plumb­ing. But what was hap­pen­ing is that many peo­ple were just brows­ing, buy­ing bar­be­cue kits and paint that this where the ig­nor­ing of a ba­sic con­cept. Every­body should be able to judge in their own minds what is es­sen­tial and non-es­sen­tial.”