Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber has wel­comed the ap­proach tak­en by the gov­ern­ment in speed­ing up the phased re­open­ing of busi­ness­es, in light of the coun­try’s po­si­tion with COVID-19.

Head of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Mar­tin George, said they ap­pre­ci­at­ed the fact that the econ­o­my can start mov­ing once again.

“As a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty we ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that busi­ness­es ba­si­cal­ly are open, save and ex­cept a few, which would be bars, casi­nos etc. How­ev­er the ma­jor­i­ty of re­tail busi­ness­es are able to now open and func­tion so we ap­pre­ci­ate that and we ap­plaud that,” he said.

Mean­while, George is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to en­sure that there is ease of ac­cess, trans­paren­cy and greater ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness for the pub­lic to be able to ac­cess the var­i­ous so­cial re­lief grants im­ple­ment­ed post-COVID-19. He said many per­sons have not re­ceived as­sis­tance.

“So we are ask­ing from a To­ba­go per­spec­tive that the THA do all with­in its pow­er and that the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment al­so fa­cil­i­tate to en­sure that all these so­cial re­lief pro­grammes for the av­er­age cit­i­zens in To­ba­go are speed­ed up, im­ple­ment­ed ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, so that we don’t keep hear­ing com­plaints from so many per­sons...if it’s not trick­ling down to the small man, the man in the street, then re­al­ly and tru­ly it ends up be­ing an ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty, as far as ef­fec­tive­ness in ac­tu­al­ly grant­i­ng re­lief to the av­er­age cit­i­zen in To­ba­go” he said.