KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter three weeks of op­er­at­ing un­der the TT Safe Zone pol­i­cy, Di­rec­tor of the Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies Ryan Chin says the gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy of on­ly al­low­ing vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to dine at restau­rants and pa­tro­n­ise cin­e­mas is caus­ing seg­re­ga­tion.

Speak­ing on the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM, Chin said that if the coun­try is pro-choice on COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion, the gov­ern­ment must al­low peo­ple to make that choice.

Chin said safe zones were ef­fec­tive be­cause they al­lowed busi­ness­es to re­open as the al­ter­na­tive is to re­main close.

The TT Safe Zone al­lows vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to en­ter gyms, cin­e­mas, wa­ter parks, and casi­nos and dine at eater­ies.

The Dachin group op­er­ates Movi­eTowne, Riz­zoni’s Ris­torante Ital­iano, Jaxx In­ter­na­tion­al Grill and Texas de Brazil, which were closed for al­most six months due to a spike in COVID-19.

Chin said the gov­ern­ment al­ready did a lot by pur­chas­ing vac­cines and putting the in­fra­struc­ture and ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign in place. He quot­ed the old proverb that you can lead a horse to wa­ter, but you can­not make it drink.

“Every­body has all the in­for­ma­tion and has all the re­sources at hand. It is now ba­si­cal­ly for them to make their choic­es and stand by those choic­es. We know that the hos­pi­tals right now are very over­run. That is a risk that you have with the choice. As I said, you take the chance. If you think your body can sus­tain and hold up to these sorts of things, then so be it. Each of us will look out for our­selves,” Chin said.

He said some pub­lic health mea­sures, in­clud­ing the 10 pm cur­few, was ham­per­ing busi­ness. From the cus­tomer per­spec­tive, Chin said it forces them to dine at an un­rea­son­able pace as peo­ple would usu­al­ly go to a restau­rant around lunchtime and be­tween 7 pm to 9.30 pm. Whether in cin­e­mas or restau­rants, op­er­at­ing with a 50 per cent cus­tomer ca­pac­i­ty means every­one has lim­it­ed time to at­tend. 

“It is un­eco­nom­i­cal, and op­er­a­tional­ly, it is very chal­leng­ing. I am hop­ing, again, some­thing like mid­night will def­i­nite­ly al­low us to close a lot more rea­son­able and give us more am­ple time to start to get home,” Chin said.

As an em­ploy­er, the Dachin group tries to give the staff at least two hours to get home be­fore the cur­few starts. Chin said taxis tend to fin­ish their shifts ear­ly, leav­ing staff mem­bers strand­ed, and po­lice are not un­der­stand­ing at times.

He said staff and man­agers some­times rush clos­ing du­ties, which could lead to neg­li­gence be­cause of the ex­pe­dit­ed ser­vice they have to of­fer.

Chin said curb­side pick­up and de­liv­ery was not fea­si­ble as his restau­rants fo­cus on cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. He said the gov­ern­ment should have more in­cen­tives for busi­ness­es to op­er­ate rather than re­stric­tions.

Re­stric­tions that im­pede prof­itable op­er­a­tions in­clude the 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty and the ban on serv­ing al­co­holic bev­er­ages. He said many fam­i­lies are not din­ing with­out their chil­dren as those un­der 12 can­not en­ter a safe zone.

He added that while en­force­ment must be a fea­ture, health of­fi­cials and heav­i­ly armed po­lice of­fi­cers some­times vis­it Movi­eTowne two-three times a day.

“It some­times lends to that in­ti­ma­tion, so some of those things are ar­eas where I think safe zones, as I said they work, but there are a lot of things that can be im­proved.”