The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) yes­ter­day re­spond­ed to var­i­ous warn­ings and ad­vi­sories about safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty from diplo­mat­ic mis­sions with a state­ment an­nounc­ing that Port-of-Spain is open for busi­ness.

The group said the hazi­ness of the warn­ings and ad­vi­sories had left cit­i­zens in a state of doubt which is do­ing “un­told and se­ri­ous harm” to the coun­try.

“Re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly we are gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a na­tion in col­lapse based on warn­ings that are not sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence or facts,” Do­ma said.

“The un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent in east Port-of-Spain on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 19 has been added to the “mix” of pre­vi­ous ad­vi­sories to cre­ate a new tox­i­c­i­ty to the im­age of our coun­try and its cap­i­tal. We un­der­stand the high stan­dard to which for­eign mis­sions are held re­gard­ing the safe­ty and well-be­ing of their cit­i­zens, but we al­so feel con­strained to re­spect­ful­ly de­fend the im­age of our coun­try.”

The group, which re-stat­ed its sup­port for agen­cies fight­ing against all forms of ex­trem­ism, ex­pressed con­cern that ac­count­abil­i­ty has been ab­sent from re­cent threat warn­ing in T&T.

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “We do not want to en­dan­ger the progress of sen­si­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions, but we al­so do not want to wors­en the gloom that is en­gulf­ing the out­look of a ma­jor­i­ty of our peo­ple in all stra­ta and in all class­es in our coun­try. This gloom about Trinidad and To­ba­go is spread­ing quick­ly among the in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty both lo­cal and for­eign and is mak­ing it­self felt in many ar­eas of our econ­o­my.

“Ask­ing us to “get re­al” about our in­quiries con­cern­ing re­cent threat warn­ings can be re­spect­ful­ly an­swered by us ask­ing var­i­ous com­men­ta­tors to up­hold our right to know and to de­cide for our­selves as to how to pro­tect our­selves and our fam­i­lies and how to judge con­di­tions in our coun­try.”

In un­der­scor­ing that the na­tion’s cap­i­tal is open for busi­ness, Do­ma cit­ed the ex­am­ple of Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez who led a clean up in per­son in the af­ter­math of the chaos of Feb­ru­ary 19.

“We are ac­tive­ly deal­ing with is­sues re­lat­ed to se­cu­ri­ty, park­ing, home­less­ness and we are mak­ing progress, al­beit in small steps but progress nonethe­less,” Do­ma said.