The fol­low­ing is the of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), in re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing up the re-start date for sev­er­al busi­ness­es from Sat­ur­day 24th May, to Thurs­day 21st May 2020…

TTMA STATE­MENT ON EAR­LY RE-START­ING OF MAN­U­FAC­TUR­ING BUSI­NESS­ES BY GOV­ERN­MENT

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion has been no­ti­fied that Phase Two of the sched­uled re­open­ing of busi­ness has been brought for­ward by three days to Thurs­day, May 21st.

The As­so­ci­a­tion had writ­ten to the Prime Min­is­ter and to the Min­is­ter of Health ask­ing for a re­con­sid­er­a­tion of the pro­posed restart date of Sun­day, May 24th.

The ra­tio­nale pro­vid­ed by the TTMA is that the sec­tor has al­ready proven it­self to be re­spon­si­ble and equipped to con­trol the spread of Covid-19 through ro­bust safe­ty prac­tices and a new set of pro­to­cols that have been adopt­ed sec­tor wide. Fifty per­cent of man­u­fac­tur­ers have been op­er­at­ing as es­sen­tial busi­ness­es over the past eight weeks, while the na­tion’s Covid-19 con­ta­gion has been re­duced from 116 to 1 case.

We asked the Prime Min­is­ter to have con­fi­dence in the re­main­ing fifty per­cent. He has to­day ex­pressed this by ac­cel­er­at­ing the date for the re­open­ing of man­u­fac­tur­ing, and we wish to thank him for the de­ci­sion tak­en.

The TTMA is now call­ing on all of its mem­bers and all man­u­fac­tur­ers to act re­spon­si­bly by con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing their HSE process­es, to safe­guard the health and well­be­ing of our peo­ple, sup­pli­ers and all who do busi­ness with us.

We are cau­tion­ing all man­u­fac­tur­ers to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to en­sure that strin­gent safe­ty mea­sures are in place be­fore re­open­ing. We are charged with hu­man lives and the cost of a resur­gence is too high a price to pay for a lack of vig­i­lance.

The new Covid-19 HSE pro­to­cols are read­i­ly avail­able on the As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTMA.com) web­site, as are re­sources for PPE, sig­nage, and san­i­ti­za­tion prod­ucts and equip­ment.

We are all keen to get back to work and to get peo­ple back in­to em­ploy­ment. It has been a chal­leng­ing two weeks, but we are ready to re­open and to get back on track with our 2025 growth strat­e­gy.