RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Three months af­ter clos­ing, shop­ping malls across South Trinidad opened for the first time on Mon­day but there were no throngs of peo­ple wait­ing to buy.

Com­pared to South Park and C3 Shop­ping Cen­tre, the Gulf City Mall ap­peared to have the most cus­tomers up to 1 pm.

Many stores at South Park were still closed with on­ly a few shop­pers, while C3 Cen­tre had just a few dozen cus­tomers.

Even though spe­cial­ist dis­in­fec­tant ser­vices were com­plet­ed on the Gulf City Mall on Sun­day, there was still some last-minute main­te­nance works in progress.

Pe­ter Singh, a di­rec­tor of PSIT So­lu­tions and his team were seen clean­ing AC vents, ducts and au­to­mat­ic door en­trances. Singh said it was rou­tine work which took place on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis.

“We clean here all the time. We will be here for the en­tire day mak­ing sure that every­thing is ok,” he said. Singh said he did not think the open­ing of the malls should have been done so soon.

“My per­son­al opin­ion is that its a lit­tle too ear­ly but if peo­ple fol­low guide­lines and wear masks, (use) hand sani­tis­ers and prac­tice their so­cial dis­tanc­ing, we should be ok,” he added.

He said there was a rup­tured main on Sun­day but it was re­paired and the foun­tain was back to nor­mal with clean gush­es of wa­ter.

Some stores such as Pay­less Shoe Source was closed much to the cha­grin of some shop­pers.

Joseph Vic­tor and his wife Eliz­a­beth told Guardian Me­dia that they left their Point Fortin home to buy a pair of work boots for Vic­tor at the mall but the Pay­less store was closed. A sign was stuck on the door in­form­ing peo­ple that it will open on June 2.

Own­er of Tor­ry Ho­sein Store, Vi­dal Ho­sein, said he ex­pect­ed more cus­tomers.

“We are try­ing to at­tract cus­tomers with on­go­ing sales of house clothes. We are try­ing to en­cour­age peo­ple to shop but of­fer­ing deals such as buy one get an­oth­er free.

“Peo­ple are now get­ting ac­cus­tomed to the malls be­ing open so not very many peo­ple have come to so far,” Ho­sein said.

At the C3 Cen­tre, most of the stores were open but many were emp­ty with the ex­cep­tion of the Dig­i­cel Store and Won­der­ful World.

Store man­ag­er Kavi­ta Sawh said she was hap­py that the mall was open. She said the store is with­hold­ing ser­vice from any­one with­out a mask.

“We are very hap­py to be back out to work and for this morn­ing we have had a nice flow with peo­ple fol­low­ing all the guide­lines. The mall doesn’t al­low any­one in who are not wear­ing masks so we had no prob­lems so far,” she added.

There were al­so a few cus­tomers at Op­tometrists To­day as well as in the RIK Book­stores.

Mean­while, at South­Park Mall, there was a line out­side the JMMB Bank. Most of the stores were de­void of peo­ple. A mall work­er said: “Peo­ple don’t seem to re­alise that the mall is open. Maybe it might pick up lat­er in the day.”

Mean­while, on High Street and Cipero Street, busi­ness was al­so slow.

Vice Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Dave Tick­ers­ingh, said there were over 10,000 peo­ple job­less and he did not an­tic­i­pate an in­crease in sales.

“We will be fac­ing a few tough years, the economies of the world have dropped tremen­dous­ly. We hope peo­ple will shop sen­si­bly and wear a mask so they will be safe and oth­ers will be safe,” he added.

On High Street, ven­dors ex­pressed re­lief that stores were fi­nal­ly open.

Sadesh Sood­eens­ingh said: “I thank God for open­ing to­day. Those past few months were re­al­ly tough,” he said.

Own­er of Avinash Jew­ellers and Lax­mi Jew­ellers said they brought out a full com­ple­ment of staff. How­ev­er, they said they will be mon­i­tor­ing sales to de­ter­mine whether they could sus­tain a full team of staff.