Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

With just a few days to go be­fore the TT Safe Zone sys­tem takes ef­fect, sev­er­al restau­rant op­er­a­tors are still un­clear about some of the rules.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion was sent to restau­ra­teurs yes­ter­day high­light­ing the rules, fines, penal­ties and ex­emp­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with con­vert­ing their es­tab­lish­ments in­to Safe Zones.

How­ev­er, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Trot­ters Restau­rant Group, Pe­ter George, said the doc­u­ment lacked de­tails on key el­e­ments of how they will have to op­er­ate.

“It just says the type of es­tab­lish­ment—restau­rant, bars, pri­vate clubs and so on— the rules are em­ploy­ees must all be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Copies of vac­ci­na­tion cards must be kept on the premis­es and copies of cards avail­able for in­spec­tion and rules for pa­trons ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and one proof of valid ID,” George said.

“They have ad­dressed the key things but it is fair­ly vague. It does not give spe­cif­ic de­tails as far as what the ex­emp­tions are go­ing to look like and what ex­act­ly hap­pens when peo­ple come. When these health of­fi­cials come, do they just say ‘I am go­ing in­side’ and are they free to walk to any ta­ble and ran­dom­ly ask peo­ple, very un­com­fort­ably, ‘Can I have your pa­pers please?’” George ques­tioned.

He fur­ther asked, “Is it go­ing to be one health of­fi­cial and two po­lice of­fi­cers, or two health of­fi­cials and one po­lice of­fi­cer? I mean, we just don’t know so we’re go­ing in­to this fair­ly un­clear.”

Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed CEO Si­mon Hardy told Guardian Me­dia he too was un­clear about cer­tain mea­sures.

“If I am op­er­at­ing as a Safe Zone and an un­vac­ci­nat­ed cus­tomer wants to have take-out, how do we han­dle that? Can the team hand you that out­side of the premis­es, so we don’t breach the Safe Zone bub­ble?” he ques­tioned.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh clar­i­fied this as­pect of Hardy’s con­cern dur­ing the min­istry’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, say­ing that pick-up ser­vice will be al­lowed to con­tin­ue at Safe Zone restau­rants.

Apart from restau­rants, bars, pri­vate mem­bers’ clubs, gyms, and wa­ter parks will al­so be al­lowed to op­er­ate as Safe Zones from Mon­day. Once these busi­ness­es are iden­ti­fied as Safe Zones, there is a fine of up to $25,000 if un­vac­ci­nat­ed pa­trons or em­ploy­ees en­ter the premis­es.

George, how­ev­er, said he al­so in­tends to ap­ply this rule to pub­lic health of­fi­cials and po­lice of­fi­cers.

“I am not go­ing to let you in­side of my premis­es on the risk of a $25,000 fine, be­cause if a sup­pli­er was to come to my restau­rant, or if any­body was to come in­to my restau­rant un­vac­ci­nat­ed, I am li­able to a fine, so I am not go­ing to let any­body in to in­spect un­der the same cir­cum­stances,” he in­di­cat­ed.

Hardy ex­pressed a sim­i­lar con­cern.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, it makes the sys­tem more ro­bust if the peo­ple com­ing to check if we are op­er­at­ing a Safe Zone them­selves need to be vac­ci­nat­ed, oth­er­wise it some­what changes the va­lid­i­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the whole scheme,” he said.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob has not­ed the con­cerns of busi­ness own­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic and said there was a “sim­ple” so­lu­tion.

He re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that a de­ci­sion has been tak­en, with the agree­ment of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, to al­low on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed po­lice of­fi­cers to man Safe Zones.

“We have de­cid­ed in our dis­cus­sions that in each di­vi­sion, there will, in fact, be a se­lect­ed num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers who will be giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to vis­it these Safe Zones,” Ja­cob re­vealed.

“One of the re­quire­ments is that these of­fi­cers who are vac­ci­nat­ed to have their cards on dis­play.”

The act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er stat­ed that the Po­lice Ser­vice’s data­base is al­ready up­dat­ed with the names of ful­ly, par­tial­ly and un­vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers. He was un­able to con­firm the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers but em­pha­sised that there are suf­fi­cient vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers in each di­vi­sion to car­ry out these ex­er­cis­es.

“There may be more than one pa­trol de­pend­ing on the size of the di­vi­sion, but we will have ad­e­quate of­fi­cers to vis­it these zones,” Ja­cob as­sured.

How­ev­er, while on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed po­lice of­fi­cers will be al­lowed in­to Safe Zone busi­ness­es, the Min­istry of Health said it will not stop un­vac­ci­nat­ed Pub­lic Health in­spec­tors from car­ry­ing out the nec­es­sary checks at these sites.

Mean­while, an­oth­er area of con­cern for George is fake im­mu­ni­sa­tion cards. He ad­mit­ted that his staff is not trained to iden­ti­fy bo­gus cards.

“So if some­one comes now and they un­wit­ting­ly come to us and slip through the crack with the fake card, am I go­ing to be li­able for that? The right thing would be for them to do their job in­stead of putting the onus on us,” George said.

“The best thing, to be hon­est with you, is that if it is that these gov­ern­ments are mak­ing these man­dates, have a health of­fi­cial and po­lice of­fi­cer at every door at every restau­rant, or at least the ma­jor restau­rants and do your job.”

Act­ing CoP Ja­cob mean­while warned that of­fi­cers are trained to iden­ti­fy fake cards.

“In fact, our Fraud Squad, is do­ing some in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to some as­pects of fraud­u­lent cards. They were giv­en the tem­plate of what to look for in re­la­tion to whether or not a card is fraud­u­lent, yes or no,” Ja­cob said.

George said his over 200 staff across Trot­ters, Bu­zo, Ama­ra, Blue Star Din­er and Tom­my’s restau­rants are vac­ci­nat­ed and ready to op­er­ate. He said all of his restau­rants will re­sume in-house din­ing from Mon­day.

How­ev­er, Hardy said Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed restau­rants, in­clud­ing TGI Fri­days, KFC, Piz­za Hut and Sub­way, will re­sume in-house din­ing on a phased ba­sis, since the staff is still be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

“The fo­cus, I think, will be the TGI Fri­days brand will come on stream in the Safe Zone op­er­a­tion first and as we con­tin­ue to see that we are at the stage where the oth­er brands’ vac­ci­na­tion lev­els per­mit, they will then come on stream to be a Safe Zone,” Hardy not­ed.

He could not con­firm whether a time­line was in place for the var­i­ous restau­rants to re­sume this ser­vice, em­pha­sis­ing that the com­pa­ny re­spects the rights of work­ers to refuse vac­ci­na­tion.