Hours af­ter Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith held a news con­fer­ence, where he said he was amazed to see that 250,000 names were giv­en by 2,800 or­gan­i­sa­tions to have cur­few pass­es is­sued, that fig­ured sky­rock­et­ed to 350,000 ap­pli­cants with close to 7,000 let­ters com­ing from com­pa­nies re­quest­ing ex­emp­tions.

How­ev­er, Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said late yes­ter­day evening on­ly 8000 cur­few pass­es were grant­ed from that mam­moth fig­ure as the pur­pose of this cur­rent State of Emer­gency is to lim­it the move­ment of peo­ple.

Dur­ing the news con­fer­ence, Grif­fith said he re­ceived let­ters from roti shops, char­tered ac­coun­tants, sailors aboard ships, gas sta­tions, ma­rine sur­vey­ors and event and tent rental com­pa­nies, PH dri­vers, con­trac­tors, unions, “divers who clean un­der boats asked for cur­few pass and it goes on and on”, he said.

The CoP said he felt many peo­ple such as CEOs, chair­men and di­rec­tors of com­pa­nies on­ly want­ed pass­es as some form of sta­tus sym­bol.

He sin­gled out MTS (Na­tion­al Main­te­nance and Train­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny) which asked for 4,037 pass­es, but added “this was not go­ing to hap­pen.”

“Giv­ing out these pass­es would de­feat the pur­pose of the State of Emer­gency, which is to lim­it the move­ment of cit­i­zens, so that the surge in COVID cas­es and deaths, could be coun­tered. This SoE is dif­fer­ent to past SoEs,” Grif­fith said.

“It is not busi­ness as usu­al. In let­ters, every man and dog asked for a per­mit and it was giv­en (in 2011) and per­sons able to trav­el left right and cen­tre as fo­cus was for crim­i­nal el­e­ments. I have spent 26 hours non­stop re­view­ing all 2,800 let­ters for cur­few pass­es. Over 250,000 names came to me for pass­es of names to be giv­en which is quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion and the names are still com­ing in. Our job is to min­imise free­dom of move­ment es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the cur­few pe­ri­od,” Grif­fith said.

He said while some com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es have al­ready agreed to ad­just the work­ing hours of em­ploy­ees so that they would not re­quire a per­mit and be out at 9 pm, oth­ers have not been so flex­i­ble and un­der­stand­ing.

“NAMDE­V­CO sent a memo to all mar­kets that they would re­main open till 3.30 am as they are es­sen­tial ser­vices. You are say­ing be­cause we are an es­sen­tial ser­vice in­tend to op­er­ate as nor­mal? Peo­ple have com­plete­ly mis­un­der­stood the op­er­a­tions here. That is not true. I’ve re­ceived hun­dreds of ap­pli­ca­tions from ven­dors say­ing mar­kets open from 3.30 am but that is not the case. As the CoP, un­less you have cur­few pass­es, we can stop you, ap­pre­hend you, take you in for ques­tion­ing and per­sons may be ar­rest­ed. So, per­sons who be­lieve it is busi­ness as usu­al cause they deem them­selves as es­sen­tial ser­vice, it ain’t gonna hap­pen,” he added.

Grif­fith said it was time for a be­hav­iour­al shift in the coun­try.

“Pass­es will on­ly be giv­en to per­sons who have a rea­son to be on the street be­tween 9 pm and 5 am. I’m ask­ing for be­hav­iour­al change and for us to un­der­stand what is re­quired.”

The Com­mis­sion­er, how­ev­er, not­ed that in emer­gency cas­es where peo­ple may have to go to the hos­pi­tal or rel­a­tive’s house that if stopped by the po­lice they will be al­lowed to state their case and would be es­cort­ed by the po­lice to their des­ti­na­tion.

Grif­fith said that peo­ple should not pan­ic if there is an en­counter with the po­lice dur­ing cur­few hours, but as­sured that those who in­tend­ed to chal­lenge the sys­tem, “would be dealt with.”