PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Push back the cur­few time to mid­night.

This was the call made by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dami­an Ly­der yes­ter­day, dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

Ly­der, cit­ing con­cerns raised by Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce CEO Gabriel Faria in a re­cent me­dia in­ter­view, ar­gued that the cur­few should be ad­just­ed in the best in­ter­est of the flail­ing busi­ness sec­tor of the coun­try.

“Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, ac­cord­ing to Faria, typ­i­cal­ly op­er­ate in shifts from 6 am to 2 pm and then a sec­ond shift be­tween 2 pm to 10 pm. So he called for a mid­night and mid­night to 5 am cur­few to ac­com­mo­date a sec­ond shift. As I think fur­ther that man­u­fac­tur­ers are forced to close their doors at be­tween 6 pm and 7 pm to fa­cil­i­tate staff reach­ing home be­fore the 9 pm cur­few,” Ly­der said.

He al­so not­ed that the coun­try was al­so head­ing in­to what is tra­di­tion­al­ly the peak pe­ri­od for re­tail busi­ness with the Di­vali and Christ­mas sea­sons ap­proach­ing.

“This 9 pm to 5 am cur­few is in place un­der a State of Emer­gency that will end in No­vem­ber, in the heart of the peak sea­son,” said Ly­der, not­ing this will not on­ly im­pact sales but the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port mar­ket as well.

“This lim­its man­u­fac­tur­ers from get­ting to the ca­pac­i­ty from man­u­fac­tur­ing to sup­ply, the re­quire­ment, the de­mands of a re­open­ing econ­o­my. Fur­ther­more, the con­tin­ued cur­few re­stric­tions over the next three months will make it dif­fi­cult for man­u­fac­tur­ers to re­spond to the in­creased de­mand of goods and ser­vices for re­open­ing ex­port mar­kets, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” he said.

Ear­li­er, Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to com­bat vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy in the coun­try de­spite its vast num­ber of avail­able vac­cines. He sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment could give the pub­lic tar­gets or the pro­ject­ed num­bers they were look­ing at in or­der to con­sid­er re­open­ing recre­ation spaces such as beach­es or restau­rant din­ing ar­eas.

“Tell us at what num­ber of COVID cas­es you will al­low for the open­ing up of the eco­nom­ic and recre­ation­al spaces. For ex­am­ple, in-house din­ing or beach­es, or at what lev­el of cas­es will de­crease the cur­few hours and even­tu­al­ly end the State of Emer­gency, or is it go­ing to be the same wait and see game with no clear­ly de­fined ac­tion points with de­ci­sions, be­ing an­nounced some­what ar­bi­trar­i­ly,” said the Fyz­abad MP, who ar­gued that with the num­ber of vac­cines now avail­able, such plans can be shared with the pub­lic.

“We are now in a po­si­tion where sure­ly, the Gov­ern­ment can share some com­pre­hen­sive plan, as to how our beloved coun­try is ex­pect­ed to move for­ward,” Bo­doe said.