A day be­fore the gov­ern­ment is­sued an ex­emp­tion for sport­ing clubs, per­mit­ting them to re­main open dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, po­lice shut down the St An­drews Golf Club in Mo­ka, of which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th is said to be af­fil­i­at­ed.

The rev­e­la­tion came from Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter do­nat­ing a wheel­chair in his con­stituen­cy, Mooni­lal ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of amend­ing the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions to serve its pri­vate in­ter­est. He ques­tioned why gyms, which had non-con­tact ac­tiv­i­ty, stayed closed while sport­ing clubs now had the priv­i­lege to re­main open. “The Row­ley Gov­ern­ment is guilty of man­i­fest in­equal­i­ty and hypocrisy in its rash de­ci­sion to ex­empt mem­bers’ sport­ing clubs from clo­sure in the midst of the Covid-19 cri­sis,” he said.

Mooni­lal said the gov­ern­ment must ex­plain the ra­tio­nale be­hind this ex­emp­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment must tell the na­tion whether the ex­emp­tion was grant­ed af­ter the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had the day be­fore, closed down a promi­nent golf club and fa­cil­i­ty in north Trinidad, of which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is an ac­tive mem­ber,” Mooni­lal said. He added, “ There must al­so be a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion for grant­i­ng the ex­emp­tion to the golf club and sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ties af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter told Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith that the law must be en­forced equal­ly.” 

“The ex­emp­tion would per­mit cer­tain se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and their deep-pock­et friends to so­cialise at the club af­ter a game of golf,” Mooni­lal charged. 

He added, “The burn­ing ques­tion is whether gyms which in­volve non-con­tact ac­tiv­i­ties and sup­port a wide range of sport­ing dis­ci­plines can open for busi­ness as golf clubs.”  
Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith con­firmed that Mar­aval po­lice had shut down the club. Say­ing this was yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of how the reg­u­la­tions could be in­ter­pret­ed. Grif­fith said even though he would have left the re­tail out­let of the club open while the ac­tu­al club re­mains closed, Mar­aval po­lice in­ter­pret­ed the reg­u­la­tions dif­fer­ent­ly and closed the club in its en­tire­ty.

“This is an­oth­er ex­am­ple where the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance can be based on in­ter­pre­ta­tion and there can be blurred views which makes it dif­fi­cult for the po­lice at times. My in­ter­pre­ta­tion is that even though the po­lice may not have done any­thing in­cor­rect­ly, it has stat­ed that the club should be closed, it al­so gives al­lowances for cafe­te­rias and re­tails stores to be open, so even though a club could be closed, I did not see a rea­son why cafe­te­ria and stores could be closed,” Grif­fith said.

He added that some mem­bers of the club brought the mat­ter to his at­ten­tion, not­ing, “it was not the Prime Min­is­ter.”

Asked whether he agreed with Mooni­lal that the gov­ern­ment was act­ing in pri­vate in­ter­est by chang­ing the Pub­lic Health or­di­nance, Grif­fith said, “I would not make com­ments on the views of MP’s on ei­ther side. What I would do is to en­sure the law is en­forced and there would be no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for any­one. At times it is very dif­fi­cult be­cause we al­ways do every­thing based on po­lit­i­cal views, race. The TTPS can­not op­er­ate like this. How­ev­er, when it comes to these reg­u­la­tions as I said it can be blurred and there could be a dif­fer­ence in in­ter­pre­ta­tion.”