Don’t shut us down again.

It goes al­most with­out say­ing that the sec­ond shut­down has af­fect­ed the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty more than the first.

How­ev­er, di­rec­tor of Kam­ri In­vest­ments Ltd and Kam­ri Glass, Khameel Khan is of the view that the sec­tor should not have been shut down at all. Even so the com­pa­ny has used tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove its busi­ness mod­el in midst of the con­stant lock­down threat.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Khan said he agreed with the ini­tial de­ci­sion to shut down the coun­try be­cause of the nov­el­ty of the coro­n­avirus and the fact that we were not as in­formed as we are to­day.

“But af­ter the first time I don’t agree with shut­ting down man­u­fac­tur­ing be­cause we are all learned peo­ple, we know the pro­to­cols. Now that we are all vac­ci­nat­ed, be­cause we were on the dri­ve to vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate, there can be eas­i­er guide­lines to op­er­ate,” said the Di­rec­tor of Kam­ri In­vest­ments Ltd and Kam­ri Glass.

The past 15 months has been full of ad­just­ment, he ex­plained, with the first work from home or­der last March, be­ing a trans­for­ma­tive learn­ing process.

“When the first one came in, we at Kam­ri, we were just like every­body else: are you sure man­u­fac­tur­ing have to close’? You know the whole se­ri­ous­ness of it hit hard,” he said.

In ex­plain­ing the chal­lenges his com­pa­ny en­coun­tered Khan not­ed that the sud­den­ness of the clo­sure did not al­low for the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the busi­ness and it im­pact­ed work­ers neg­a­tive­ly.

“Fi­nan­cial­ly, of course, it af­fect­ed every­one. Every­body in Kam­ri has been here for many years so it’s like a big fam­i­ly. They’ve been work­ing for 15, 17 years, you know, that kind of thing. So we pre­ferred stay­ing at home, but we did not have the amount of in­fra­struc­ture and to set up that in­fra­struc­ture while we were at home, work­ing on­line was dif­fi­cult,” Khan said.

Khan speaks of the chal­lenge of shut­ting off equip­ment that is de­signed to run con­sis­tent­ly in­clud­ing its kilns.

“Fac­to­ry wise it cost­ed us more be­cause our fac­to­ry, our equip­ment wasn’t de­signed to shut­down. We have two fur­naces or what you will call kilns. These things need to be a par­tic­u­lar tem­per­a­ture 24 hours for the day and that was our biggest chal­lenge,” he said.

Allhiro Sanchez operates the glazing bead machine at Kamri Glass in Marabella as the manufacturing sector reopened.

RISHI RAGOONATH

It al­so in­creased the com­pa­ny’s risk be­cause with a closed bor­der it would be near im­pos­si­ble to get spe­cial­ists to re­pair the fur­naces had some­thing gone wrong by shut­ting them down.

“We can’t shut it down and if we shut it down and some­thing goes wrong, the bor­ders are closed and there is no en­gi­neer in Trinidad and we can’t get one to come in,” said Khan. For­tu­nate­ly the com­pa­ny man­aged to nav­i­gate this, as well as the fi­nan­cial strain of the lock­down with some cru­cial piv­ot­ing. Their sav­ings saw them through the first clo­sure, but it was fore­sight that got them out of the re­cent re­stric­tions in rel­a­tive­ly good stand­ing.

“For­tu­nate­ly for us we have been al­ways putting aside for a rainy day, not know­ing what it would have been. And we fi­nan­cial­ly were okay with the first one in terms of prepa­ra­tion for all our staff and our con­tin­ued bill pay­ment. Very few of the bills were put on hold.

“An ex­am­ple, E-Teck doesn’t stop rent but they post­poned it, you know, we all know what the banks did. Again, for­tu­nate­ly we were in a good fi­nan­cial sta­tus be­cause of the amount of years we op­er­at­ed and you know, luck­i­ly that pull us through the first one,” said Khan, who said with their sav­ings erod­ed they had to hatch a con­tin­gency giv­en that around the world stop and start was the trend.

“Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the first one, we pre­pared for a sec­ond one. We had to re­alise that this is the new nor­mal be­cause we were look­ing at the news all over the world, they weren’t shut down and stay­ing shut out. They were shut­ting down and start­ing up. So we took that time to one yes put aside some mon­ey but al­so beef up our Face­book and on­line pres­ence.”

Staff was pre­pared for out of of­fice work, they were sent home with com­put­ers, in­ter­net ser­vice was con­sol­i­dat­ed for work from home.

Khan said all of this was done “so that if this hap­pened again we would just have to snap our fin­gers and op­er­ate the very next day.”

But recog­ni­tion that the lock­down would al­most cer­tain­ly crip­ple the lo­cal mar­ket al­so meant the com­pa­ny would have to fo­cus on for­eign ser­vices.

“We were able to fo­cus on the ex­port mar­ket be­cause there’s noth­ing go­ing on lo­cal­ly, that is if you can pro­duce, so, we were able to com­mu­ni­cate more and as a big­ger team of all staff mem­bers in­volved with sales, they had to choose an is­land. Choose an is­land and let’s go to­geth­er as a team. We will com­mu­ni­cate get leads and move for­ward,” he said.

But af­ter build­ing clien­tèle, main­ly across the Caribbean, Khan is wary that shut­ting down again could be dis­as­trous. He stressed that if there is an­oth­er spike a com­plete shut­down of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor must not be a go-to mea­sure.

“Par­tial­ly turn­ing a wheel is bet­ter than stop­ping a wheel and start­ing it back af­ter months to go. Every­one will agree run­ning slow is bet­ter. Yes it may lose but in the long run it is bet­ter to have a wheel turn­ing and then you speed it up than op­posed to hav­ing it crank start it,” he said.

“I don’t agree with shut­ting down man­u­fac­tur­ing again. I think there are ways they can go about it and fine tune. Be­cause we as a man­u­fac­tur­er, we now look more in­ter­na­tion­al and glob­al as op­posed to just Trinidad.

“My firm is a tem­pered glass fac­to­ry. There are no oth­er tem­pered glass fac­to­ries in Caribbean. So if they close us, what do I tell the oth­er Is­lands now be­cause there are air­ports that buy our prod­ucts.”

Khan said his com­pa­ny was for­tu­nate that they were able to de­liv­er on their or­ders and for the time be­ing their clients have been un­der­stand­ing.

“We re­opened and we com­mu­ni­cat­ed with peo­ple who were very un­der­stand­ing be­cause they know they need to sup­port the Caribbean mar­ket. So that has giv­en us a nice push to speed up our wheel as the lo­cal econ­o­my is pick­ing up,” he said.

In the past week Khan has seen his fac­to­ry re­turn to full op­er­a­tion

So, when we com­bine them both, we would have been in good health. As of yes­ter­day our fac­to­ry is in full run, full op­er­a­tion.

He es­ti­mates that 90 per cent of his em­ploy­ees are vac­ci­nat­ed. Khan ad­mit­ted the fi­nal 10 per cent are hes­i­tant.

“They have that right,” he said.

“I be­lieve in life no­body should forced to do any­thing. Life it­self is sim­ple as it is. The choice of vac­cine is a mat­ter of ed­u­cat­ing them and train­ing them to, think dif­fer­ent not threat­en­ing them in any way. They are to be more ed­u­cat­ed and look around at for­eign and lo­cal news. If they need to look at more for­eign news to boost their con­fi­dence lev­el, that’s it,” he said, dis­miss­ing any pol­i­cy that would make vac­cines manda­to­ry. He how­ev­er not­ed that with COVID af­fect­ing more and more peo­ple close to their fam­i­lies, many who were hes­i­tant were now agree­ing that “some pro­tec­tion is bet­ter than none.”

Khan ex­plained that his fac­to­ry was al­so heav­i­ly com­put­erised, so main­tain­ing pro­to­cols would not be an is­sue.

“Our fac­to­ries when we bought them and we mod­i­fied them, it was al­ways to be more com­put­erised. So we have al­ready cut labour in terms of every as­pect so we can’t cut out any­more,” he said, “If you look at a fac­to­ry that needs 30-40 peo­ple that’s not Kam­ri. We al­ready op­er­at­ing as a small amount of labour and we be­lieve in the labour be­cause they’re a big part of be­ing our fam­i­ly. We have them re­pur­posed in­to dif­fer­ent things in the com­pa­ny, but our fa­cil­i­ty is huge and it’s more than one lo­ca­tion. So we were able to move them around to not have an ex­ces­sive amount of labour force in one lo­ca­tion.”

Many busi­ness­es were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the lock­down but he stressed that those who were able to main­tain lev­els of prof­itabil­i­ty had to play their part in stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my so that oth­er busi­ness­es can re­main vi­able.

“What we be­lieve in this time is pay­ing your bills on time to help your part­ner com­pa­nies, ne­go­ti­ate bet­ter, buy big­ger, bring down a price. So when some peo­ple say the econ­o­my is bad and need cred­it is not just cred­it it is prop­er mon­ey man­age­ment and time,” he said.

Go­ing for­ward he urged all busi­ness­es to for­mu­late plans to re­main op­er­a­tional even if an­oth­er vari­ant should emerge.