Plans by Gov­ern­ment to not have a sec­ond ex­ten­sion to the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) has brought a sigh of re­lief to busi­ness cham­bers across the coun­try.

The cham­bers see the move as a life­line to thou­sands of busi­ness­es that have been strug­gling to keep afloat since the SoE was im­ple­ment­ed in May to tight­en re­stric­tions and curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The first SoE was ex­tend­ed in Au­gust.

At a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment that he had no in­ten­tion of ask­ing Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the SoE which comes to an end this month.

Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Vivek Char­ran told Guardian Me­dia that the SoE has lived its time.

“The end of the SoE means that restau­rants and bar own­ers that have been suf­fer­ing.... they now have an­oth­er lease on life....they are now al­lowed to open up longer hours. This will be a life­line.”

Char­ran said they can on­ly hope by the end of No­vem­ber, a new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er is ap­point­ed.

While the cur­few and SoE have re­duced bur­glar­ies, Char­ran said “it is im­por­tant that we have a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in charge for con­fi­dence with­in the busi­ness sec­tor and dur­ing that busy Christ­mas pe­ri­od. What a lot of peo­ple are think­ing is that at the end of the SoE and cur­few will we see a re­turn of crime that we had pre­vi­ous­ly seen be­fore. That is wor­ry­ing for some peo­ple.”

The con­fed­er­a­tion rep­re­sents 13 cham­bers.

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber Gabriel Faria who had pre­vi­ous­ly called on Gov­ern­ment to re­lax the re­stric­tions yes­ter­day wel­comed the an­nounce­ment.

“As the Prime Min­is­ter not­ed based on his learn­ings from the script the world is learn­ing to live with an en­dem­ic COVID-19. It is time to get peo­ple’s lives and busi­ness­es back to some sort of nor­mal while we fol­low the re­quired health pro­to­cols.”

Faria plead­ed with cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed, stat­ing that COVID would be around for a while.

As busi­ness­es gear up for sales this Christ­mas, Faria said he was hope­ful that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice would op­er­ate un­der new lead­er­ship and man­age­ment in the com­ing weeks.

“We hope that this mat­ter will be put to rest short­ly,” he said, re­fer­ring to the ap­point­ment of the new CoP.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud told Guardian Me­dia the as­so­ci­a­tion was grate­ful that the SOE and cur­few will be dis­con­tin­ued.

He said the PM’s de­ci­sion was a pos­i­tive step for the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, restau­rants, night­clubs, bars and food es­tab­lish­ments.

“But while we keep a pos­i­tive out­let be­cause of that news we al­so keep an ap­pre­hen­sive eye on the very high num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es and deaths re­port­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

“We hope and pray that the Gov­ern­ment has both sce­nar­ios in mind...one be­ing the reemer­gence of the T&T econ­o­my from this ter­ri­ble episode and the oth­er be­ing the need to con­trol the in­fec­tion rate in T&T.”

Aboud said DO­MA was ex­treme­ly con­cerned about the vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy that con­tin­ues to ex­ist in the coun­try.

He said get­ting the jab was the on­ly path­way to free­dom from this op­pres­sive virus.