The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) is plead­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter to re­turn the bar sec­tor to some sense of nor­mal­cy from Mon­day as the 28 days re­stric­tions come to an end.

"Whilst we were al­lowed to open with a grab and go sys­tem, this sys­tem was not fea­si­ble to sus­tain our busi­ness­es. More than 60% of the bars opt­ed to re­main closed dur­ing this pe­ri­od due to high over­heads," BOATT said in a state­ment Thurs­day.

It added: "Through­out the pe­ri­od from March to present day, the in­dus­try faced nu­mer­ous chal­lenges, due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic. Much of our de­mo­graph­ic have faced co­pi­ous amounts of grief and mis­for­tune, fore­clo­sure, un­em­ploy­ment, evic­tion and bank­rupt­cy. Nu­mer­ous bars have had to shut their doors for good dur­ing this pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od."

The As­so­ci­a­tion said it un­der­stands the se­ri­ous­ness of the present sit­u­a­tion faced here at home and around the world but said they be­lieve that fur­ther clo­sure and re­stric­tions to busi­ness­es is not the an­swer but in fact prop­er ad­her­ence and en­force­ment of the health pro­to­cols and guide­lines are nec­es­sary to adapt to the new nor­mal.

"We are hope­ful that the Prime Min­is­ter ad­dress on Sat­ur­day will bring some sense of nor­mal­cy back to bar own­ers, staff and fam­i­lies as we have been one of, if not, the hard­est hit sec­tor dur­ing this very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od," BOATT said.