Grate­ful to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sell food, street ven­dors in Pe­nal, San Fer­nan­do, Debe and Mara­bel­la yes­ter­day ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion not to ban road­side vend­ing.

At Union Mara­bel­la, Sha­di Rubuz, the own­er of May­oosh Fried Chick­en and Shrimp said he was thank­ful that food ven­dors were not shut down like restau­rants, casi­nos and clubs.

“I am hap­py and grate­ful to the Prime Min­is­ter that we can make an hon­est dol­lar and feed the fam­i­ly,” he said.

His work­er An­ge­lo Pino dis­trib­uted hand sani­tis­er to all cus­tomers who ar­rived and the sur­face of the food cart was sprayed down af­ter cus­tomers made pur­chas­es.

Along the SS Erin Road, Bar-B-Que ven­dors, as well as dou­bles ven­dors, came out ear­ly. Cus­tomers lined up mak­ing sure to so­cial­ly dis­tance them­selves.

Kavi­ta Bharath said, “We know that COVID is ris­ing and we can­not take any chance. We are hap­py that we can at least pur­chase street food. It was hard the last time when we could not buy food. Not every­one has the time to cook.”

At the Dou­bles Strip in Debe, a su­per­vi­sor at Has­sanali’s Green Shed, Sal­ly Mand­lal said all COVID-19 pro­to­cols were in place.

“We try to have every­body so­cial dis­tanc­ing. We have two sell­ers serv­ing and no more than two peo­ple be­hind the glass case. We form a line and peo­ple are not al­lowed to con­gre­gate,” she said.

But some were puz­zled by the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to stop curb­side pick­up of food from restau­rants but still al­low food vend­ing un­der a tent.

Ryan Chin in a Face­book post ques­tioned, “Street Vend­ing and tents are ok to con­tin­ue while restau­rants of­fer­ing curb­side and con­tact­less de­liv­ery on­ly are con­sid­ered un­safe to op­er­ate and have been closed?”

The pres­i­dent of Trinidad’s Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Has­sel Thom al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Thom said, “I saw no rea­son to cur­tail curb­side pick­up. The po­lice should en­sure that no one goes in­to the es­tab­lish­ment. They pick up and leave. There was no rea­son to cur­tail curb­side pick­up.”

He pre­dict­ed that more restau­rants will close down be­cause of ex­tend­ed lock­down mea­sures.

“Restau­rants own­ers who em­ploy peo­ple have had to find ways of ad­just­ing to sur­vive. More restau­rants are go­ing to close,” he added.

He al­so said that the pub­lic has been flout­ing COVID-19 pro­to­cols and even though restau­rant own­ers have been rig­or­ous­ly fol­low­ing the guide­lines, they were now be­ing pun­ished.

Thom al­so said that the in­dus­try will not see a re­cov­ery this year but may see this in 2022 and 2023 if the COVID-19 sta­tis­tics re­main low. He lament­ed that restau­rant own­ers have nev­er re­ceived any as­sis­tance and are still strug­gling to deal with over­head costs in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter bills.