Some 275 work­ers are now out of jobs af­ter the Trot­ters Restau­rant Group took a de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly close its op­er­a­tions un­til the Gov­ern­ment al­lows the food sec­tor to re­turn to in-house din­ing dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the de­ci­sion on Sat­ur­day, Trot­ters Restau­rant Group CEO Pe­ter George Jr said the tem­po­rary clo­sure of his restau­rants was a “pure­ly eco­nom­ic de­ci­sion,” as he is now strapped for cash.

Six restau­rants be­long to George’s group of com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Trot­ters (which has two out­lets), Ama­ra, Bu­zo, Blue Star Din­er and Tom­my’s.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, George said it was with a “heavy heart“ that he was an­nounc­ing the sus­pen­sion of his restau­rant op­er­a­tions ef­fec­tive Au­gust 2 at 9 pm.

“Our busi­ness is pred­i­cat­ed around world-class, ex­pe­ri­en­tial din­ing and as much as we have tried, there is no vi­a­bil­i­ty in just curb­side and take-way op­er­a­tions. We stand ready, if and when that time comes, to re­sume full dine-in op­er­a­tions.”

Al­though Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley par­tial­ly re­opened the restau­rant sec­tor two weeks ago, George said that this was sim­ply not enough to sus­tain op­er­a­tions.

“I can’t af­ford to sit here and ab­sorb these mas­sive loss­es every sin­gle month with no idea of what is go­ing to be hap­pen­ing in the fu­ture,” George told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view.

“Curb­side and take away just does not work. Some restau­rants may choose to re­main open but a busi­ness of our size with mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions, it is dif­fi­cult to run cost-ef­fec­tive­ly in these con­di­tions.”

George has been an out­spo­ken crit­ic of how the Gov­ern­ment has man­aged the eco­nom­ic cri­sis caused by the pan­dem­ic.

Ear­li­er this year, he wrote to both the Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, out­lin­ing “a $6.45 bil­lion TT COVID-19 Mar­shall plan” aimed at sta­bil­is­ing cit­i­zens’ fi­nan­cial po­si­tions, as well as in­cen­tivis­ing and stim­u­lat­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty to as­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of the so­ci­ety.

Ad­dress­ing his own chain’s fu­ture sta­tus, he said his work­ers will be in­def­i­nite­ly fur­loughed.

“We will re­main closed un­til din­ing re­opens. This is un­til the Gov­ern­ment re­opens and I don’t know when that is,” George said.

He added that “it wasn’t an easy de­ci­sion to make” and he knows how se­ri­ous­ly im­pact­ed his staff will be.

“I have al­ways told them that any­time this could stop. There is not much more that we could do. The busi­ness sim­ply does not have the re­sources any more,” he said.

“This is 16 to 17 months. Peo­ple who were promised salary grant sup­port for the month of May have not re­ceived that sup­port in Au­gust. It tells you clear­ly where this Gov­ern­ment’s head is. I have to sup­port the rest of my busi­ness and hope it sur­vives if and when it re­opens.”

Asked to give a spe­cif­ic fig­ure on how much mon­ey he is los­ing month­ly, George did not. He, how­ev­er, said that with the tem­po­rary clo­sure, he would be sav­ing mon­ey.

“No one will get paid, from land­lords to sup­pli­ers. The busi­ness has waved the white flag. We will have to do as much as we can and speak to sup­pli­ers and tell them that the busi­ness con­tin­ues to lose mon­ey with take away. I told the staff their biggest con­cern should not be their jobs now but that there is a busi­ness that can be saved.”

Vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy

Just last week, an in­ter­nal memo dat­ed Ju­ly 23, 2021, from George to work­ers at his restau­rants on vac­ci­na­tions sur­faced on so­cial me­dia. In the memo, George said while the com­pa­ny re­spect­ed every­one’s right to free­dom of choice when it comes to their health and their body, the group had to take sev­er­al de­ci­sions ahead of the re­sump­tion of ­in­door din­ing.

The memo stat­ed that all staff who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed will be re­quired to wear dou­ble face masks, face shields, which will be pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny and pro­vide a PCR test every two weeks at their own ex­pense. Fail­ure to do so will re­sult in the staff mem­ber be­ing left off the ros­ter.

Book­store own­er Nigel R Khan al­so sent a sim­i­lar in­ter­nal memo which was al­so leaked on so­cial me­dia. Khan told his staff they were at a height­ened risk to the virus and its vari­ants be­cause of their en­gage­ment with the pub­lic.

“Ef­fec­tive 2 Au­gust 2021, all mem­bers of staff both en­gag­ing with the pub­lic and back­line staff are du­ly en­cour­aged to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus or sub­ject them­selves to a Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion (PCR) test every four­teen (14) days, at per­son­al cost,” the memo said.

Staff were al­so man­dat­ed to wear face masks and face shields, prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing and bring their own hand sani­tis­er to keep on them at all times. The first test­ing pe­ri­od will be 14 days af­ter Au­gust 2, the memo added.

The pol­i­cy has prompt­ed the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (FI­TUN) to write to the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion seek­ing a meet­ing with the busi­ness bod­ies to dis­cuss a vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

How­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Richie Sookhai has said that al­though the cham­ber be­lieves the pop­u­la­tion should be vac­ci­nat­ed, busi­ness own­ers should not strong-arm their em­ploy­ees to take the vac­cines.

Asked to com­ment on a voice note which has been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia in which Sookhai’s stand was com­ment­ed on, George said he has noth­ing against Sookhai and has nev­er met him but he (George) stands by his po­si­tion that em­ploy­ees should be vac­ci­nat­ed in or­der to safe­ly op­er­ate the busi­ness.

He al­so said he has not forced any­one to be vac­ci­nat­ed but not­ed that he al­so has to en­sure he pro­vides a safe work en­vi­ron­ment for all his em­ploy­ees, adding the same must al­so be pro­vid­ed for cus­tomers.

“I have not forced my staff to be vac­ci­nat­ed. The Gov­ern­ment has made it clear to busi­ness­es that we need to vac­ci­nate or we will not open. That's the space with­in which we have to work. We have done every­thing to en­sure that staff un­der­stands what vac­ci­na­tion is. We re­spect staff's choice not to get vac­ci­nat­ed,” he said.