Renu­ka Singh

Pan­ic has al­ready set in for busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and cham­bers as the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of the shut down of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es took them by sur­prise.

Some or­gan­i­sa­tions told Guardian Me­dia that they were con­cerned that there was a marked lack of de­tails in the Gov­ern­ment’s sud­den an­nounce­ment of the shut down of non-es­sen­tial com­pa­nies and for every­one else to stay at home.

The cham­bers and as­so­ci­a­tions al­so say that there was no en­gage­ment with them be­fore the Gov­ern­ment made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria first com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment for their han­dling of the COVID-19 cri­sis but said that with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

“We recog­nise the rea­son that the Gov­ern­ment has es­ca­lat­ed the mat­ter and the clo­sure of non-es­sen­tial ser­vices, our dis­ap­point­ment is that there was no en­gage­ment with the pri­vate sec­tor,” he said.

“We are more dis­ap­point­ed that just yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) I was in a meet­ing with three min­is­ters and I ac­tu­al­ly raised it as a point of con­cern and sug­gest­ed that we tried to look at it proac­tive­ly,” he said.

Faria said there was no in­di­ca­tion then of what the Gov­ern­ment had in­tend­ed to do.

“The great­est strength peo­ple can bring is col­lab­o­rat­ing and un­der­stand­ing what they do not know,” he said.

“So I think our dis­ap­point­ment is not the de­ci­sion to es­ca­late, our dis­ap­point­ment is that since the press con­fer­ence, the minute this was is­sued, I have re­ceived no less than a com­bi­na­tion of 100 phone calls and mes­sages and emails from peo­ple ask­ing me how is this go­ing to af­fect their busi­ness,” Faria said.

“We could have al­le­vi­at­ed that if the Gov­ern­ment had proac­tive­ly en­gaged the busi­ness sec­tor, not to do it in the back­ground, but at least have a dis­cus­sion and iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial chal­lenges,” he said.

Faria said there were busi­ness­es fac­ing chal­lenges “that I did not think about”.

He said that some busi­ness­es that may not be con­sid­ered “es­sen­tial” but they still have con­tain­ers at the port to clear.

“Those con­tain­ers and go­ing to be cleared Mon­day or Tues­day next week, how is that go­ing to be dealt with?” he asked.

Head of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, busi­ness­man Ki­ran Singh said he and his mem­bers were al­so wor­ried about the State’s an­nounce­ment and lack of de­tails.

“We have peo­ple who would close busi­ness on Fri­day and on­ly find out then if they are con­sid­ered es­sen­tial and be al­lowed to open or be closed,” Singh said.

He said an­oth­er wor­ry was the cur­rent run on gro­ceries and phar­ma­cies.

“The ‘no more than 10 peo­ple in a space’ gone out the win­dow,” he said.

“Pan­ic buy­ing go­ing to cre­ate short­ages and even though the ports will re­main open there is not guar­an­tee that the goods will be cleared on Mon­day or Tues­day,” he said.

Singh said that the shut­down may lead to a spike in the crime as pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty may not be con­sid­ered es­sen­tial.

Head of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Reval Chat­ter­goon added his praise to the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the COVID-19 virus but al­so took them to task for the new re­stric­tions.

“It is my view that the soon­er that we can get a han­dle on the virus is the faster that we re­turn to nor­mal­cy,” he said.

Chat­ter­goon said that peo­ple of­ten dis­missed the im­por­tance of Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es.

“But when you look at the amount of peo­ple that we em­ploy and the ef­fect that such a re­strict­ed ac­cess would have on them,” he said.

He said busi­ness­es were al­ready deal­ing with drops in sales, even gas sta­tions were fac­ing a 30 per cent dip in sales.

“It is a cause for con­cern,” he said.