Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

If you spend time at the pok­er ta­ble or the slot ma­chines, pre­pare to en­ter a whole new world.

The T&T Mem­bers Club As­so­ci­a­tion is say­ing that pri­vate mem­bers clubs are ready to re­sume op­er­a­tions in a safe and re­spon­si­ble man­ner.

In a re­port by the as­so­ci­a­tion, it said: “The en­tire slots gam­ing floor has been re-de­sign to al­low 90 per cent of the ma­chines to be able to main­tain rec­om­mend­ed so­cial dis­tanc­ing, the oth­er 10 per cent. Sneeze guards will be used, and the mov­ing out of seat­ing to al­low for so­cial dis­tanc­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion, the mem­bers’ clubs would be of­fer­ing a healthy and hy­gien­ic en­vi­ron­ment for its mem­bers and staff as they have de­vel­oped pro­to­cols based on World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) guide­lines and the gov­ern­ment of T&T.

The re­port added: “All em­ploy­ees will be pro­vid­ed train­ing on all cur­rent and up­dat­ed stan­dards.”

It al­so not­ed that ad­her­ence to health and safe­ty stan­dards by all man­agers and the em­ploy­ees is non-ne­go­tiable.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion in­di­cat­ed that with­in the clubs, pri­vate health com­pli­ance per­son­nel will be trained and on du­ty to di­rect­ly ad­dress all rel­e­vant con­cerns or events that may arise dur­ing op­er­a­tions.

Pri­or to the re-open­ing, the mem­bers clubs in­stalled sinks, signs and par­ti­tions at gam­ing sta­tions. More­over, all line and se­cu­ri­ty staff would be trained on the de­f­i­n­i­tion of COVID-19, the symp­toms of the virus, the ease by which this virus can spread, the sever­i­ty of in­fec­tion and the strate­gies to mit­i­gate the spread of the virus.

Thee as­so­ci­a­tion as­sert­ed that demon­stra­tions would be done for the des­ig­nat­ed clean­ing staff at the clubs, where they would be trained on how to prop­er­ly clean a slot ma­chine, a con­tact sur­face and how to ef­fec­tive­ly di­lute clean­ing prod­ucts. The staff would al­so be shown the chem­i­cals, which should not be mixed such as bleach and am­mo­nia.

The clean­ing and sani­tis­ing process out­lined by the as­so­ci­a­tion en­sures sani­tis­ing dis­pensers would not on­ly be avail­able at var­i­ous spaces in the gam­ing area, but the slots staff will mon­i­tor play­ers and aid in sani­tis­ing as well.

Guide­lines have been es­tab­lished by the as­so­ci­a­tion, which in­cludes the reg­u­lar sani­ti­sa­tion of all slot work­sta­tion ar­eas every 15-20 min­utes, all oc­cu­pied slots ma­chines would be sani­tised reg­u­lar­ly and every time a play­er gets up to moves the ma­chines the ma­chine would be sani­tised.

It al­so in­di­cat­ed that when­ev­er a new play­er comes to a ma­chine it will be sani­tised, where the play­er would be al­lowed to wit­ness be­fore pro­ceed­ing to play.

All play­ers’ trash will be cleaned up reg­u­lar­ly and that area sani­tised, all trash dur­ing op­er­at­ed hours will be placed in a des­ig­nat­ed area for trash on­ly and sprayed. Af­ter it is dis­posed at the end of op­er­a­tion the area will be cleaned and sani­tised.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said that seat cov­ers would be sani­tised every time a new play­er starts and when play­ers fin­ish, no play­ers would be al­lowed to stand be­hind or bet on some­one else’s hand and play­ers and staff would not be al­lowed to con­gre­gate.

Fur­ther­more, the as­so­ci­a­tion high­light­ed that a sani­tised deck of plas­tic cards would be used af­ter each deal­er change, and the out­go­ing deal­er will sani­tise the out­go­ing cards with rub­bing al­co­hol.