RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the warn­ing from the Prime Min­is­ter to stay at home, scores of peo­ple con­tin­ued to be on the streets of San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

As the rains poured, one man was seen sit­ting on the side­walk while a steady stream of shop­pers ex­it­ed the Carl­ton Cen­tre walk­way.

Street ven­dor Sharon Noel said, “I came out the road to make some dumpling and smoked her­ring.” 

Asked whether she ap­pre­ci­at­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s call to stay home, Noel said, “If he feels it is for the best, then it is for the best. We have to do what we have to do.”

An­oth­er passer­by Alexan­der Leza­ma said he went to work at a WASA project site but was told to re­turn home be­cause of rain.

An­oth­er woman said she had gone to the doc­tor to get an X-ray, while a few oth­ers said they were on their way to work.

One woman said she had to go to the bank with her fa­ther-in-law who was a pen­sion­er.

Good ve­hi­cles dropped off items at the re­tails stores and those which were open seemed to be do­ing main­te­nance and stock tak­ing.

Some ran from the me­dia cam­eras while oth­ers walked past un­con­cerned.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said most peo­ple were fol­low­ing the Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions. 

“Of course there are one or two peo­ple who break pro­to­col. Some don’t feel like a cham­pi­on un­less they break the rules and they will face the con­se­quences of that,” he said.

Singh said based on pro­jec­tions an es­ti­mat­ed 20 per cent of re­tail stores in the city will face per­ma­nent or tem­po­rary clo­sure af­ter this lock­down.

“We be­lieve that we are in for se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial times and we hope that we can re­cov­er from this,” he said. He called for an ag­gres­sive vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

 “The economies that are re­cov­er­ing are those with the ag­gres­sive vac­cine cam­paign. De­vel­oped coun­tries are hoard­ing vac­cines. We know the gov­ern­ment is work­ing to ad­dress the short­fall in vac­cines,” he said.

He al­so called on the po­lice to pa­trol closed busi­ness­es.

“We hope our hard work­ing Com­mis­sion­er and the TTPS will be in full force. The el­der­ly are vul­ner­a­ble in that they have to stay at home and busi­ness­es that are closed be­come easy tar­gets for crim­i­nal el­e­ments,” he said.

He not­ed that the Cham­ber has ad­vised busi­ness own­ers to re­tool, re­stock and con­duct main­te­nance dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od.

He not­ed that the IMF’s pro­jec­tion of pos­i­tive growth for 2021 was im­pos­si­ble to achieve.

“I think if we main­tain sta­bil­i­ty with­in the econ­o­my, that will be a pos­i­tive sign but we don’t see any pos­i­tive growth. That is prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble to keep this econ­o­my go­ing. Based on the fact that we are a petro­chem­i­cal econ­o­my and petro­chem­i­cal en­er­gy prices have been down. We hope as re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens we can tight­en our belt but we are al­ready do­ing so,” he said.

Singh urged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to fol­low all COVID-19 pro­to­cols, say­ing that T&T will sink fur­ther in an eco­nom­ic tail­spin if the COVID-19 spike con­tin­ues to climb.