The Min­istry of Trade has is­sued a state­ment telling the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that the pub­lic health mea­sures that we im­ple­ment­ed last Fri­day un­der a new health or­di­nance, were done to “pre­serve the health and safe­ty of their cus­tomer base, em­ploy­ees and by ex­ten­sion cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

The state­ment was in re­sponse to com­ments from the var­i­ous busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions to the gov­ern­ment’s re­cent de­ci­sion to lim­it the op­er­a­tions of cer­tain busi­ness­es in an at­tempt to stem rapid­ly ris­ing COVID-19 in­fec­tions.

Among the new mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed last week, malls, restau­rants, bars, cin­e­mas, casi­nos, beau­ty par­lours, gyms and fit­ness cen­tres were closed.

The mea­sures run un­til May 23.

The min­istry said it ac­knowl­edged the sac­ri­fice of the pri­vate sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly medi­um, small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es in the last 13 months, but re­mind­ed that sev­er­al sec­tors re­main open for busi­ness.

It ad­vised the sec­tors that were forced to close to utilise al­ter­na­tive means to en­sure their sus­tain­abil­i­ty, in­clud­ing and to ex­plore e-com­merce op­tions.

The min­istry al­so said all busi­ness­es must see it as their solemn re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to strict­ly ob­serve the pub­lic health guide­lines to en­sure the health and safe­ty of em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers.