The Bar Own­ers / Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (BOATT) is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ease cur­rent pub­lic health re­stric­tions im­posed for the COVID-19 cri­sis, and to al­low them to open ear­li­er than sched­uled.

In a news re­lease, BOATT says it is de­vel­op­ing a pol­i­cy doc­u­ment for its mem­bers on how to “op­er­ate in the new nor­mal”, and is hop­ing Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers al­low­ing bars and pubs to op­er­ate once more, dur­ing the Phase 4 pe­ri­od, out­lined for the re­open­ing of the T&T econ­o­my.

Dur­ing Phase 4, malls, re­tail stores and beach­es are tar­get­ed for re­sum­ing full op­er­a­tions.

The full text of the state­ment is­sued by the As­so­ci­a­tion, fol­lows.

The re­cent­ly formed Bar Own­ers/Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (B.O.A.T.T.) is call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter, Min­is­ter of Trade and the Min­is­ter of Health to in­clude the Bar in­dus­try in the 4th phase of busi­ness­es re­open­ing. The B.O.A.T.T is in the process of de­vel­op­ing a COVID-19 Pol­i­cy for Bar Op­er­a­tions and is work­ing with its mem­ber­ship to en­sure that they would be com­pli­ant in time for open­ing.

The B.O.A.T.T. wish­es to point out that our sec­tor was the first to be shut down due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and now due to the ex­cel­lent man­age­ment of the cri­sis by our Pub­lic Health Of­fi­cials and the Min­istry of Health re­sult­ing in the flat­ten­ing of the curve, ur­gent con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to the re­open­ing of our sec­tor in line with the new nor­mal.

The B.O.A.T.T. mem­ber­ship (which is grow­ing every­day) cur­rent­ly stands at 156 mem­ber bars with 884 em­ploy­ees; the wider bar sec­tor has an ap­prox. 5000 bars (Gov­ern­ment 2017 es­ti­mate) through­out the coun­try with an es­ti­mat­ed 20,000+ em­ploy­ees. Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion these em­ploy­ees and their de­pen­dents the clo­sure of the sec­tor has im­pact­ed an es­ti­mat­ed 80,000+ per­sons di­rect­ly and an­oth­er es­ti­mat­ed 20,000+ small sup­pli­ers and ser­vice providers in­di­rect­ly. Both di­rect and in­di­rect to­tal 100,000 + per­sons af­fect­ed.

The B.O.A.T.T looks for­ward in en­gag­ing all the rel­e­vant STAKE­HOLD­ERS on the way for­ward and op­er­at­ing busi­ness dur­ing this crit­i­cal pe­ri­od.