KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Bar own­ers and man­agers said yes­ter­day that the gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed a some­what “Pe­ter pay for Paul, Paul pay for all” re­ac­tion when it cut down their open­ing hours.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced yes­ter­day that be­cause of the be­hav­iours of bar pa­trons and the in­ef­fec­tive­ness of a few bar op­er­a­tors to con­trol gath­er­ings over the week­end, bars are now al­lowed to open be­tween the hours of 8 am and 8 pm.

For bar own­ers and man­agers in San Fer­nan­do, this is a re­gres­sive move against a sec­tor that shut its doors for three months.

“We were now get­ting a chance to earn some­thing with the hours of eight to 10. Now it is eight to eight. You need to re­mem­ber that peo­ple fin­ish work at 5 o’clock and dur­ing the day, peo­ple are not re­al­ly drink­ing much. From 5 to 10, we were mak­ing a rea­son­able sale that could hope­ful­ly sus­tain us,” Shane Mar­shall of Mar­shall’s cor­ner said.

While the gov­ern­ment’s ra­tio­nale was the be­hav­iour of a few bars, he said each bar has its own cir­cum­stance.

Mar­shall said most peo­ple do not stay long at the bar, so there is no is­sue with so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“One bad ap­ple should not spoil the whole bunch,” was Michael Bas­combe’s take on the re­duced hours.

At the Sea View Bar at King’s Wharf which he man­ages, Bas­combe sat at the en­trance, en­sur­ing every­one ap­plied hand sani­tis­er be­fore en­ter­ing. He said the scenes of bars in North Trinidad are dif­fer­ent from what takes place in South.

Michael Bascombe, manager at Sea View Bar, King’s Wharf, San Fernando, clears the counter at the bar yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

“There are bars that are fol­low­ing all the pro­ce­dures and pro­to­cols, so I be­lieve they should take that in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. There are peo­ple who are do­ing what they are sup­posed to do so why do we have to feel the brunt of the law per­tain­ing to the be­hav­iours of just a few,” Bas­combe said.

At D’Pub along Quen­ca Street, Anand Cha­toor felt the clos­ing hour should re­main at 10 pm and let the po­lice en­force the law.

D’Pub is a pop­u­lar af­ter-work lim­ing spot but is try­ing to re­cov­er af­ter months of clo­sure.

Cha­toor said while the gov­ern­ment sees the change as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure, the open hours did not pose a dan­ger.

“It is hard be­cause our bills are mount­ing. Reg­u­lar cus­tomers are com­ing, but I do not know what will hap­pen now that we have to close at 8 pm. Nor­mal­ly when peo­ple fin­ish work, around six or sev­en, they will come and make a lit­tle small lime,” Cha­toor said.

Some bar pa­trons said the move was a knee-jerk re­ac­tion and not well thought out. Ki­no Bethel said he un­der­stands the plight of bar own­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those who made in­vest­ments be­fore the par­tial shut­down of the econ­o­my.

“Yes we know what is go­ing on with the coro­n­avirus, but if our bor­ders are closed, we do not have any coro­n­avirus here. All the cas­es we got are cas­es that came in­to our coun­try.

“Do you all care about the peo­ple who had their places closed for three to four months? Open the place, leave the bor­ders close and let the mon­ey cir­cu­late. Let the peo­ple live,” Bethel said.

He said the po­lice should crack down on er­rant bar own­ers and pa­trons, but al­low law-abid­ing busi­ness­es to car­ry on.