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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Bar owners concerned but prepared to hold out

by

Jesse Ramdeo
1760 days ago
20200914
Interim President of the Bar Owners and Operators Association Teron Mohan.

Interim President of the Bar Owners and Operators Association Teron Mohan.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Pres­i­dent of the Bar Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (BOATT) is as­sur­ing that his mem­bers will com­ply with the COVID reg­u­la­tions de­spite ex­press­ing con­cerns about the pos­si­ble im­pacts of the gov­ern­ment’s lat­est ex­ten­sion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion had plead­ed with the gov­ern­ment for op­er­a­tions to re­turn to a lev­el of nor­mal­cy pri­or to Sat­ur­day’s an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that ex­ist­ing mea­sures will re­main in ef­fect for an­oth­er month.

The as­so­ci­a­tion had is­sued a re­lease paint­ing a grim pic­ture of the in­dus­try and stake­hold­ers dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od. It said many bar own­ers and staff mem­bers ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere fi­nan­cial loss­es, es­pe­cial­ly in the last month.

But ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s head, Teron Mo­han, de­spite the crip­pling ef­fects of the re­stric­tions on bar own­ers and op­er­a­tors, the coun­try’s COVID-19 cri­sis war­rant­ed full cor­po­ra­tion.

“We would al­so go on some sort of cam­paign some sort of vi­su­al cam­paign to show the pub­lic that bars are not re­spon­si­ble for the spread of Covid-19, we do un­der­stand what is re­quired of us and we will cam­paign that we are able to do things in a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment so as to not just car­ry on our busi­ness but en­sure pub­lic safe­ty as well.”

Pre­vi­ous at­tempts by the as­so­ci­a­tion to lob­by the gov­ern­ment to re­turn op­er­at­ing hours to nor­mal had fall­en on deaf ears with the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing their busi­ness en­cour­aged peo­ple to vi­o­late the health or­di­nance, mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so staged protests out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter but that al­so did not sway the gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.

Back in Ju­ly over three hun­dred bar own­ers chal­lenged gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­duce op­er­at­ing hours and sought com­pen­sa­tion for loss­es sus­tained dur­ing the lock­down, Mo­han said mat­ter was still be­fore the court.


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