JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Govt’s careful COVID balancing act

by

Guardian Media
1732 days ago
20201011
Editorial

Editorial

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment of con­tin­ued COVID-19 re­stric­tions may not have been the news most Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens were ex­pect­ing to hear Sat­ur­day.

With the Prime Min­is­ter adding an­oth­er two weeks of such re­stric­tions, it is hard­ly like­ly cer­tain sec­tors of so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly busi­ness own­ers and ser­vice in­dus­try work­ers ea­ger to re­turn to full eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, would have been pleased.

How­ev­er, based on the in­for­ma­tion di­vulged at yes­ter­day’s up­date, it is clear the coun­try is still well off from fa­cil­i­tat­ing a re­open­ing of more ac­tiv­i­ty.

As of Sat­ur­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram says T&T was av­er­ag­ing 50 new cas­es per day, which trans­lates to a pos­si­bil­i­ty of at least one death per day. The suit­able tar­get is 20 new cas­es per day – con­sid­ered a safe lev­el for coun­tries our size.

Still, a few mea­sures were eased, with gath­er­ings in­creased to 10 peo­ple in pub­lic and 20 at fu­ner­als; the ad­di­tion of four more dai­ly flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and re­open­ing Buc­coo Reef and Ca­roni Swamp tours.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was al­so clear about why the con­tin­ued mea­sures are crit­i­cal. The Gov­ern­ment had to bor­row to fi­nance the so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty need­ed to ease the bur­den on those se­vere­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing the first lock­down. This op­tion will not be avail­able go­ing for­ward and so en­sur­ing there is no sec­ond lock­down, a fate en­coun­tered by oth­er coun­tries who rushed to re­turn to nor­mal­cy, is crit­i­cal to staving off the econ­o­my’s en­tire col­lapse.

But this is al­so why Gov­ern­ment must de­vise a plan to al­low hun­dreds of work­ers in the bar/restau­rant sec­tors, un­doubt­ed­ly the most se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the mea­sures, to re­turn to a more work­able form of func­tion­al­i­ty. In­deed, if the en­tire econ­o­my is to ul­ti­mate­ly sur­vive, some sec­tors can­not be kept in abeyance for much longer.

In this re­gard, we are par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed by his re­port of high ab­sen­teeism with­in the pub­lic sec­tor, where a 50 per cent ro­ta­tion­al struc­ture was im­ple­ment­ed to main­tain rea­son­able ser­vice to the pub­lic.

It is dis­ap­point­ing that the of­fend­ing work­ers do not see the sig­nif­i­cance of their ef­fort to the col­lec­tive fight to rid the coun­try of the virus. Mem­bers of the pub­lic who al­so con­tin­ue to dis­obey the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions by not wear­ing face masks, con­gre­gat­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly, not phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing or stay­ing at home when feel­ing ill are al­so con­tribut­ing to al­low­ing the virus to mul­ti­ply dai­ly.

Much has been said of Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in fight­ing off this pan­dem­ic. But the pub­lic holds the biggest stake in this ac­tiv­i­ty and it is on­ly through a dis­ci­plined ap­proach to obey­ing the health rec­om­men­da­tions that we will be able to re­turn to liv­ing with a lit­tle less dis­com­fort.

Hav­ing said that, the Prime Min­is­ter’s anal­o­gy of en­sur­ing we do not bite off more than we can chew at this point should be enough of a word for the wise. Lives and liveli­hoods are at stake and every­one has a con­tri­bu­tion to make.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored