Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The San­gre Grande Cham­ber of Com­merce is con­cerned that this sec­ond lock­down can af­fect them.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia, cham­ber pres­i­dent Pre­ston Sam said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to look at the ef­fects of clos­ing busi­ness­es and hold con­sul­ta­tions be­fore mak­ing these de­ci­sions.

He said, “We are present­ly in a sec­ond ma­jor lock­down with­in 18 months in our coun­try. Busi­ness­es have been asked to shut their doors caus­ing rev­enue to de­cline to neg­a­tive val­ues.”

“More­so, restau­rants and bars have been the ones most af­fect­ed caus­ing a chain re­ac­tion in­to oth­er sec­tor.”

He added that ad­min­is­tra­tors had tried to con­trol the pan­dem­ic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly while ad­her­ing to sci­en­tif­ic da­ta, they con­tin­ue to use the tri­al-and-er­ror sys­tem.

The cham­ber pres­i­dent added, “So­cial dis­tanc­ing is one the newest terms used since the pan­dem­ic. Stay six feet away from each oth­er. A term I wish to use to­day is “fi­nan­cial dis­tanc­ing.”

“Shut­ting a busi­ness down means neg­a­tive rev­enue. By the ini­tial loss of raw ma­te­ri­als due to spoilage and wastage to the loss of dai­ly cash flow con­tributes to the neg­a­tive val­ues on the prof­it and loss state­ments.

“Un­em­ploy­ment in­creas­es due to fi­nan­cial dis­tanc­ing.”

He not­ed from yes­ter­day many peo­ple would be at home with­out a job and re­cur­ring ex­pen­di­ture would keep in­creas­ing, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult to sur­vive in an al­ready de­te­ri­o­rat­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

Sam said as much as full re­spect is giv­en to ad­min­is­tra­tors on their meth­ods on con­tain­ment, “I wish to make sug­ges­tions that would con­tribute to re­duc­ing fi­nan­cial dis­tanc­ing but in­crease so­cial dis­tanc­ing.”

He said his cham­ber was call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to start con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers be­fore dras­tic de­ci­sions are made and two waivers of busi­ness levy and green fund levy for the fis­cal year 2020 /2021 and as well re­open restau­rants with curb­side or de­liv­ery serv­ing on­ly

Sam said many oth­er busi­ness­es had not been in­clud­ed in his sug­ges­tions. He said if prop­er con­sul­ta­tions were held with these own­ers, “We will see a co­op­er­a­tive de­ci­sion made for the ben­e­fit of all.”