Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Po­lice Ser­vice will be look­ing in­to a pos­si­ble Safe Zone breach that was post­ed to so­cial me­dia, de­spite the al­leged cul­prit say­ing yes­ter­day evening that it was a hoax.

The al­leged in­ci­dent in­volves an un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­son mak­ing a post to so­cial me­dia giv­ing the im­pres­sion that he was in a cin­e­ma that is now des­ig­nat­ed a Safe Zone.

Roger Singh post­ed a sto­ry to his In­sta­gram page with a pho­to of food which he claimed was at Movi­eTowne. In it, he post­ed the fol­low­ing cap­tions: “Date night” and “When you know peo­ple who know peo­ple you will nev­er have to fight against each oth­er.” 

The post was in­ter­pret­ed by so­cial me­dia users as Singh us­ing per­son­al con­tacts to gain ac­cess to the es­tab­lish­ment. It was lat­er point­ed out by oth­er so­cial me­dia users he is un­vac­ci­nat­ed. 

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to lo­cate Singh by search­ing for his hair sa­lon lo­cat­ed in Barataria but it was closed.

When con­tact­ed via phone, Singh de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter. 

Di­rec­tor of Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies, Ryan Chin, told Guardian Me­dia the com­pa­ny had since launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, he said they are yet to find any truth to the claim. 

“We can­not ba­si­cal­ly con­firm any­thing. As far as we know, we’ve had no re­ports. We’ve been fol­low­ing the nor­mal pro­to­cols and every­thing very strict­ly and like I said - that pic­ture or what­ev­er has been cir­cu­lat­ing - is too gener­ic for us to re­al­ly know...to have any kind of con­fir­ma­tion re­gard­ing it,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to St An­drew/St David Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, Dr Al­lana Quam­i­na-Best, the post has now al­so opened Movi­eTowne to le­gal ac­tion.

“What that per­son has now done is ex­posed them­selves and the es­tab­lish­ment for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice ser­vice. The reg­u­la­tion is quite clear,” she said.

Any un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­son found to be at a Safe Zone is li­able to a fine of $5,000 while the es­tab­lish­ment will be fined $25,000 per breach. Af­ter the third breach, the es­tab­lish­ment will be de­barred from par­tic­i­pat­ing as a Safe Zone. 

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day he was un­aware of any re­ports on the mat­ter be­ing made to the Po­lice Ser­vice. How­ev­er, in a brief phone call, he in­di­cat­ed they will look in­to it. 

While Singh de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter with Guardian Me­dia, he took to Twit­ter to apol­o­gise for the furore.

“This video was orig­i­nal­ly tak­en on date: Ju­ly 20th 2020. The video was meant to high­light times when all per­sons use to go to the movies. I wish to state clear­ly I didn’t not go in­to Movie Towne,” the tweet said.

“I did not breach any safe zone reg­u­la­tions. I al­so wish to pub­licly apol­o­gize to those that I may have of­fend­ed, those that have mis­con­strued any post and the Movie Towne band which was clear­ly shown. Stay safe.”

T&T be­gan its Safe Zone ini­tia­tive on Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 11. The ini­tia­tive al­lows ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to en­joy leisure and en­ter­tain­ment ser­vices pre­vi­ous­ly pro­hib­it­ed. This in­cludes din­ing in at restau­rants, vis­it­ing the movie the­atres and vis­it­ing casi­nos.