Shocked, dis­ap­point­ed, con­fused and even an­gry were some of the emo­tions be­ing felt by work­ers at fast-food restau­rants across the coun­try yes­ter­day, af­ter the an­nounce­ment by Gov­ern­ment that their places of work will have to close their doors un­til April 30.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­struct­ed that all fast-food restau­rants, which had been pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed to op­er­ate as es­sen­tial busi­ness­es to pro­vide food to the coun­try, should shut down op­er­a­tions un­til April 30 in or­der to min­imise the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

For An­de­line Cyrus, she had a mix­ture of all those feel­ings pent up in­side her af­ter hear­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley speak on the clo­sures of all restau­rants un­til month-end.

“The first thing when I hear about it, I start to say what the jail? Hear me nah, hm­mm, how I go­ing to pay my bills? I say how I go­ing and pay my bills, how I go­ing to live, what am I go­ing to do?”

Cyrus has been work­ing at Tri­ni Food Court, a small restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas that serves lo­cal cui­sine for break­fast and lunch, for five years and now man­ages the dai­ly op­er­a­tions. She said if the busi­ness does not open she has no in­come to col­lect.

“When we work one week the next week you get paid for it, so if we close up we have no mon­ey com­ing in.”

There are ten peo­ple em­ployed at the es­tab­lish­ment.

Cyrus said she has a host of month­ly com­mit­ments to meet, in­clud­ing util­i­ties, gro­ceries and car­ing for her young son.

“And now he’s not go­ing to school it cost­ing me more, be­cause when he is in school he has cer­tain times to eat but when he is home every minute he wants some­thing, if I not work­ing, where I get­ting the mon­ey to buy it?”

Al­though at the time Cyrus was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia she hadn’t spo­ken with her em­ploy­ers, she al­ready had a fair idea on the grim fu­ture that lies ahead.

“I know right now, the way the sales are and how the busi­ness is, is not like they have the mon­ey to help out the work­ers. They re­ly on the dai­ly sales to pay their work­ers and to pay their bills. So is not like they have mon­ey put away.”

Cyrus said she had pre­vi­ous­ly tried ap­ply­ing for grants from the Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance when school was closed but was faced with too much red tape and un­cer­tain­ty.

“I don’t know my next move from here.”

In the same Ch­agua­nas area, sev­er­al oth­er sim­i­lar busi­ness­es said they were al­ready feel­ing the pinch, with some al­ready closed for the past few weeks due to slow sales and an abun­dance of cau­tion.

But for big­ger fast-food chains like KFC and Roy­al Cas­tle, em­ploy­ees at the Ch­agua­nas branch­es felt the same emo­tions but were re­luc­tant to speak un­til they heard from their em­ploy­ers. All ex­cept one de­liv­ery dri­ver who agreed to speak on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

He said: “I feel­ing hurt be­cause it is as if they are tak­ing bread out of my mouth. I hope they sup­ply­ing some kind of fi­nance for me and my fam­i­ly.”

The dri­ver de­pends sole­ly on the dai­ly de­liv­er­ies for in­come.

“I wouldn’t have any em­ploy­ment at all,” he said, not­ing he is un­sure of how to move for­ward.