RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Shop­pers con­tin­ued to stay away from main shop­ping ar­eas in the South City on Tues­day as the re­open­ing of phase three of the COVID-19 lock­down took ef­fect. 

Many agreed that Tues­day was much less busy than Mon­day. 

Busi­ness own­ers in San Fer­nan­do said while they were ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the re­open­ing of their trade, they were very dis­ap­point­ed that shop­pers stayed away.

At the Gulf City Mall, the car parks were filled with ve­hi­cles but in­side the mall was dis­mal.

"I think peo­ple parked their cars in the mall car park and trav­elled to work. This is the on­ly ex­pla­na­tion I could think to ex­plain why the car park is full but the mall is emp­ty," said Jaime Bir­bal, who took her niece and nephew for an evening of shop­ping.

Bir­bal said she was as­ton­ished to see sev­er­al stores per­ma­nent­ly closed.

"Sweet 16 was closed down and Meera's store was emp­ty. There were no goods and it looked as if it was closed," Bir­bal said.

The pop­u­lar Mac Store was al­so closed and Bir­bal said there was a line of peo­ple wait­ing out­side of Pay­less Shoe Source, which opened for busi­ness on Tues­day.

At the C3 Cen­tre, there was al­so a dis­mal feel­ing as most stores con­tin­ued to be emp­ty. Peo­ple lined up out­side the Dig­i­cel out­let while a reg­u­lar throng of peo­ple went to Won­der­ful World to shop for lin­gerie and make­up.

South Park Mall was al­so de­void of shop­ping crowds.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said on­ly75 per cent of stores man­aged to open in the down­town area. He said 25 per cent of stores had not been pre­pared for the re­open­ing.

"Peo­ple did not have time to re­stock, re­tool, no­ti­fy em­ploy­ees, san­i­tize and put prop­er health pro­to­cols in place for their staff and cus­tomers," he said. He not­ed that the lock­down pe­ri­od had tak­en a dev­as­tat­ing toll on some busi­ness own­ers which had forced some of them out of busi­ness.

"We can say about ten per cent of busi­ness­es in San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons have closed down," Singh said.

He added, "While we are hap­py for re­tail stores to be opened, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have not seen a great turnout for shop­pers. Shop­ping has not re­turned in any sig­nif­i­cant way and we at­tribute that to the down­turn of the econ­o­my."

He not­ed that there was still a fear fac­tor among the cit­i­zen­ry and many peo­ple were still re­luc­tant to come out of their homes be­cause of COVID-19.

Singh said some busi­ness own­ers had re­duced their prices with the hope of at­tract­ing cus­tomers.

He not­ed that some food sec­tor stores had not opened over the past two weeks de­spite get­ting the all-clear from the gov­ern­ment as their sales were de­pen­dent on work­er traf­fic in the city.

Singh called on the T&TEC to of­fer sub­si­dies to the com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al clients who were forced to close their busi­ness­es in late March. Singh ex­plained that busi­ness own­ers still had to pay Green Fund levy, in­come tax, busi­ness levy and cor­po­ra­tion tax de­spite the down­turn of the econ­o­my and clo­sure of busi­ness­es.

He al­so said the Salary Re­lief Grant should be ex­pe­dit­ed as many work­ers had ap­plied for it but got noth­ing.