There could be a fur­ther spike in un­em­ploy­ment fol­low­ing the three weeks of re­stric­tions an­nounced by the gov­ern­ment.

This was the view of Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudy In­dars­ingh, who ques­tioned the wis­dom be­hind the re­stric­tions an­nounced last week dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ press con­fer­ence at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fice in Port-of-pain yes­ter­day.

In­dars­ingh de­scribed the re­stric­tions, which were an­nounced last week amidst a spike in COVID-19 cas­es in the past few weeks, as a po­ten­tial death blow to the econ­o­my.

Over 600 new pos­i­tive COVID cas­es have been record­ed since the start of April.

“The re­cent lock­down an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter am­pli­fies the risk of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, ex­ploita­tion, as jobs are lost in the for­mal sec­tor and more and more peo­ple are re­port­ed­ly work­ing in sub­stan­dard con­di­tions and sub­stan­dard salaries sim­ply to sur­vive,” said In­dars­ingh, who es­ti­mat­ed that about 100,000 peo­ple had lost their jobs as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic so far.

“We are of the opin­ion the way that the econ­o­my is go­ing the un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures may es­ca­late to 175,000 per­sons at the end of this three-week lock­down and we are fur­ther forced to ask the ques­tion why a three-week lock­down?” the Cou­va South MP asked.

In­dars­ingh ques­tioned if any con­sul­ta­tion was done with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­cern­ing these mea­sures giv­en the frag­ile state of the econ­o­my.

“Did the Prime Min­is­ter and the gov­ern­ment con­sult any of the Cham­bers of Com­merce in Trinidad and To­ba­go? Did the Prime Min­is­ter con­sult with any of the Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss a pos­si­ble soft land­ing and ap­proach for busi­ness­es and work­ers that have con­tin­ued to be af­fect­ed by shut­downs? Did the Prime Min­is­ter con­sult with the Trade Union Move­ment re­gard­ing the wel­fare of work­ers and pos­si­ble soft-land­ing ap­proach­es to as­sist vul­ner­a­ble work­ers?” In­dars­ingh asked.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray al­so raised con­cerns about the po­ten­tial im­pact on the farm­ing sec­tor due to the re­stric­tions placed on restau­rants, as de­mand for their prod­ucts would once again be re­duced.

“Now farm­ers are go­ing to be af­fect­ed over the next month or so be­cause of the re­duced ca­pac­i­ty of the restau­rant in­dus­try to op­er­ate. Busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs are fac­ing grave dif­fi­cul­ties in meet­ing bank com­mit­ments caus­ing some to be­come in­sol­vent and many to close up shop,” he said.

Both UNC MPs al­so raised ques­tions con­cern­ing the de­ci­sion not to im­pose re­stric­tions for East­er Week­end when there were nu­mer­ous in­di­ca­tions that there would be mas­sive num­bers of peo­ple head­ed to To­ba­go while al­so ask­ing about the sta­tus of the roadmap to re­cov­ery plan.

Paray not­ed that ac­cord­ing to the web­site end­coro­n­avirus.org, Trinidad and To­ba­go was among the low­er-ranked na­tions in terms of its han­dling of the pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the web­site, while Trinidad and To­ba­go had been list­ed among the coun­try’s that was la­belled as “needs to take ac­tion” by the site, the site ranked Trinidad and To­ba­go 32nd in terms of its per­for­mance dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic out of 132 coun­tries rat­ed on the page.