Yes­ter­day’s meet­ing be­tween a team of min­is­ters from the Gov­ern­ment and sev­er­al of the um­brel­la bod­ies rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness in­ter­ests in the coun­try was a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young in­sist­ed that Gov­ern­ment is aware of how frus­trat­ed per­sons may be, how dif­fi­cult it is for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, work­ers and the vul­ner­a­ble who have to stay at home and are un­able to work.

Young said the Gov­ern­ment does not want any busi­ness closed for even a minute longer than nec­es­sary and the Ju­ly 4 re­open­ing date an­nounced as the end of the cur­rent re­stric­tion pe­ri­od, is not set in stone and re­stric­tions can be rolled back soon­er if case num­bers de­cline.

The chair­man of the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­tee said the busi­ness sec­tor, in par­tic­u­lar AM­CHAM, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try and DO­MA, ad­vo­cat­ed that any fur­ther re­stric­tions that are need­ed be put in place by the Gov­ern­ment, since the busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions felt it is bet­ter to take the bit­ter med­i­cine now and hope­ful­ly have the re­sults soon­er rather than lat­er.

These are all im­por­tant things but from what emerged, it ap­pears that there was noth­ing new nor in­no­v­a­tive from the meet­ing. Af­ter all, the Gov­ern­ment’s state­ment that it in­tends to re­open the econ­o­my in a phased way, sim­i­lar to what oc­curred last year, and that its pri­or­i­ty is in pre­serv­ing lives, is in keep­ing with the mantra for the start of the pan­dem­ic.

“We will sit down with the min­istry of health as we be­gin tem­plat­ing how we are go­ing to open and how we are go­ing to re­open the econ­o­my. But to re­open it in a safe man­ner, we will be us­ing the same tem­plate of a phased re­open­ing but there are a lot of things that have come to the ta­ble now for us to con­sid­er when we are work­ing this out,” Young said.

This sug­gests that the meet­ing, while wel­come, did not ad­vance any­thing new from the Gov­ern­ment side.

There was no time­line when it is fore­cast the sit­u­a­tion will be brought un­der con­trol, no time­lines for the re­open­ing of the bor­ders and no time­line for the vac­ci­na­tion of the min­i­mum of 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, it is good that the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to at least lis­ten to the con­cerns of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion is cru­cial and there seems to be a nar­ra­tive that the pro­tec­tion of liveli­hoods is at vari­ance with the pro­tec­tion of peo­ple. There is no doubt that gath­er­ings al­low for the virus to be spread, but it is al­so true that with the prop­er pro­to­cols in place and a high lev­el of en­force­ment and self-dis­ci­pline, it is pos­si­ble to pre­serve lives and liveli­hoods.

We need in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es now more than ever. Talk­ing is al­ways a good start but ac­tion is what is re­quired. At the end of the day, lock­downs can­not be the on­ly so­lu­tion.