With ref­er­ence to the state of af­fairs in T&T, I would like to ex­press my per­son­al views as a con­cerned cit­i­zen and a busi­ness­man with more than 60 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the su­per­mar­ket in­dus­try.

The an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day of the sin­gle con­firmed case of COVID-19 in T&T, has cre­at­ed a surge of pan­ic buy­ing. Cit­i­zens should be re­spon­si­ble and ex­er­cise con­trol over their dis­pos­able in­come and be aware of over­stock­ing un­nec­es­sary items. Ask­ing "What do I need?" in re­la­tion to "What do I want?" should be con­sid­ered when de­cid­ing what items to buy. If the sit­u­a­tion were to be­come more se­ri­ous, items nec­es­sary for ba­sic sur­vival are what should be giv­en pri­or­i­ty.

Ad­vice from the Min­istry of Health, and the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty as a whole, should con­tin­u­ous­ly play a cru­cial role in the de­ci­sions be­ing made by cit­i­zens, pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to the el­der­ly and ill. This virus en­ters a per­son’s body via mouth, nos­trils, and eyes. Prac­tis­ing good hy­giene, there­fore, is the first de­fence against con­tract­ing the virus. Sec­ond­ly, hav­ing a strong im­mune sys­tem, should one be­come in­fect­ed, is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant. Apart from the va­ri­ety of med­ica­tion avail­able, to as­sist in boost­ing one’s im­mune sys­tem, one can try lemon juice in warm wa­ter can pro­vide a nat­ur­al source of Vi­t­a­min C. We can al­so ac­quire Vi­t­a­min D by spend­ing 15 min­utes a day in the sun.

Per­mit me to ex­press some ar­eas of con­cern that have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on our fel­low cit­i­zens’ bod­ies, minds, and souls.

The im­pact of the de­cline in in­come from the en­er­gy sec­tor as a re­sult of the rift be­tween Rus­sia and Sau­di Ara­bia, as well as the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Shale Gas. Our Min­is­ter of Fi­nance sug­gest­ed that there are three ar­eas which can be ex­plored for al­ter­na­tive sources of in­come:

i) Bor­row­ing

ii) Her­itage Fund

iii) Sell­ing of As­sets

My con­cern is based on the First Cit­i­zens Bank’s Re­port “A Look at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Econ­o­my” pub­lished Ju­ly 2019, which stat­ed that 13 months ago, "da­ta from the CBTT showed that do­mes­tic debt was TT$69.51 Bn and ex­ter­nal debt was TT$25.96 Bn as at the end of Feb­ru­ary 2019." It would be in­ter­est­ing to know what the debt is to date.

For­eign ex­change re­serves are now re­duced to sev­en months of pur­chas­ing. If this con­tin­ues to the end of the year, there will be in­creased neg­a­tive ef­fects, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing our high na­tion­al im­port bills. What plans can be im­ple­ment­ed to re­place items (grow­ing food items, for ex­am­ple) to re­duce this high im­port bill? Every time there is a de­cline in oil and gas prices, there is a song that we sing, and it is not Sa­van­nah Grass, it is "Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the Econ­o­my."

I be­lieve with the present crime sit­u­a­tion, our CoP and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty need ad­di­tion­al ex­perts as­sist­ing them, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, to bring added val­ue to our com­mu­ni­ties and the coun­try. The en­tire Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­ture needs to be re­vised.

Re­gion­al­ly, Guyana, who is now be­ing con­sid­ered one of the rich­er Caribbean coun­tries, is now bub­bling with civ­il un­rest. Nev­er­the­less, I am hap­py to see our CARI­COM lead­ers step­ping in and do­ing all in their pow­er to pre­vent this volatile sit­u­a­tion from es­ca­lat­ing.

Em­ploy­ees should be mind­ful that for these is­sues to have suc­cess­ful out­comes, they should do their part—giv­ing an hon­est day’s work for an hon­est day’s wage. This will have the ef­fect of mak­ing busi­ness­es more pro­duc­tive and en­sur­ing that all bills are paid in a more time­ly fash­ion.

This is a call to en­cour­age vol­un­teer as­sis­tance from knowl­edge­able and ex­pe­ri­enced, hon­est peo­ple who have the coun­try and re­gion at heart to add sup­port.

I would fur­ther like to call up­on the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to stop play­ing games and to end the "kicks­ing" in Par­lia­ment. We need an in­clu­sive ap­proach to pre­vent a na­tion­al cri­sis, with all hands on board.

May God bless our na­tion, and may we demon­strate that every creed and race have an equal place.