Gail Alexan­der

Buy your food out­side and car­ry it home to eat be­cause po­lice can charge you for eat­ing it at the ven­dors' sites - and Gov­ern­ment might be forced to halt food busi­ness­es again.

This was the warn­ing from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at yes­ter­day’s dai­ly COVID-19 me­dia up­date as food sec­tor busi­ness restart­ed in phase one of Gov­ern­ment's COVID- 19 re­open­ing plan.

While food busi­ness­es were al­lowed to op­er­ate again is was on­ly al­lowed for pick-up as in-house din­ing is still de­barred and un­til 8 pm dai­ly. But Young said Gov­ern­ment had been get­ting re­ports and pho­tos of peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing at ven­dors’ sites and stand­ing very close­ly to­geth­er, against the phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing call by Gov­ern­ment.

“Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions state that peo­ple aren’t al­lowed to con­sume the food (they’ve bought) at a pur­chase site. So please be re­spon­si­ble - buy your food and take it home to eat, get it and move on," Young said.

"To eat it on-site will be a breach of the reg­u­la­tions and po­lice will be en­ti­tled to charge you for that – they’ll step up ef­forts to keep every­one safe from COVID-19.

“If we see this con­gre­gat­ing con­tin­u­ing we may well re­vert (to clo­sure of food places) again, we’re not afraid to pull back (re­open­ing) to pro­tect the pub­lic from COVID-19."

Young dis­played pic­tures tak­en yes­ter­day morn­ing of peo­ple lin­ing up to buy food from a van - but one cus­tomer was seen eat­ing the food on-site, off to one side.

He said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er spoke with his ex­ec­u­tive last Sun­day and of­fi­cers would have spo­ken to teams.

"Po­lice will con­tin­ue do­ing a great job but please work with them so we won’t have to charge any­body,” he urged.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh added it was against reg­u­la­tions for peo­ple to con­sume food where they bought it.

"So eat­ing on-site will en­cour­age us to pull back phase one. Ven­dors will have to play a part in dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple eat­ing on-site – that will sling­shot us back to last week (be­fore mea­sures were re­laxed),” Deyals­ingh said.

Young said since phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing is al­so need­ed, ven­dors are be­ing asked to place mark­ers for that in their spaces for cus­tomers to heed.

Un­der the lat­est reg­u­la­tions, max­is and taxis must still car­ry on­ly 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty and pub­lic gath­er­ings in open spaces are still re­strict­ed to five. Ac­cess to beach­es, rivers, ponds and springs is still barred.

Young al­so said tyre and au­to part shops aren’t part of ser­vices al­lowed to be open but said au­thor­i­ties knew some of these shops were op­er­at­ing clan­des­tine­ly. While ex­er­cis­ing out­doors is now al­lowed, he re­mind­ed that team sports with more than five peo­ple will breach reg­u­la­tions.

He added that agri­cul­ture work in­clud­ing land prepa­ra­tion - plant­i­ng, re­seed­ing et cetera - can con­tin­ue freely.