PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Trinci­ty Mall ten­ants are urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to take a sec­ond look at the re­stric­tions con­cern­ing shop­ping malls as this coun­try cur­rent­ly has no ac­tive con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es.

Sev­er­al ten­ants at the mall have again ex­pressed con­cerns about their abil­i­ty to pay Com­mon Area Main­te­nance charges, which they are still re­quired to pay de­spite be­ing un­able to con­duct busi­ness at their stores.

Shop­ping Malls are list­ed to be re­opened in Phase Four of the gov­ern­ment's post-COVID plans, along­side beach­es.

The food out­lets, gro­cery, and phar­ma­cy at the mall are cur­rent­ly open as they have been grant­ed per­mis­sion un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance.

Sev­er­al store own­ers, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said they con­tin­ue to face ex­or­bi­tant charges and with­out any busi­ness com­ing in, the strain may be too much for store own­ers to re­turn to busi­ness when the lock­down is lift­ed.

Pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Vivek Char­ran, who is one of the mall ten­ants says this un­cer­tain­ty is fu­el­ing fear among store own­ers.

"To be hon­est it's re­al­ly tough, I don't think there is a sce­nario where. I think it varies from mall to mall what con­ces­sions they are giv­ing. I think some malls are giv­ing bet­ter con­ces­sions than oth­ers. I feel the sit­u­a­tion with Trinci­ty Mall is quite sim­ply that many of the larg­er peo­ple have to pay CAM charges, for ex­am­ple, some of the CAM charges they may have to pay still amount to about $40,000 a month," he said.

Some own­ers say in ad­di­tion to the mall charges, some are still at­tempt­ing to pay their staff with­out any in­come com­ing in­to them.