Chaot­ic scenes erupt­ed across the coun­try yes­ter­day as it seemed every­one was in a rush to get things done. Hours af­ter the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith boast­ed of the suc­cess of the 19-hour cur­few im­posed, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­strict­ed cit­i­zens’ move­ments on the In­di­an Ar­rival Day hol­i­day on Mon­day, chaot­ic scenes erupt­ed across the coun­try as peo­ple rushed to get every­thing done be­fore the next 19-hour cur­few kicks in for the Cor­pus Christi hol­i­day on Thurs­day.

The im­po­si­tion of these re­stric­tions at month’s end when tra­di­tion­al­ly hun­dreds of pen­sion­ers line up to get their cheques and many flock to the banks, su­per­mar­kets, and oth­er es­tab­lish­ments to get their busi­ness done, re­sult­ed in ex­act­ly what the au­thor­i­ties have been hop­ing would not hap­pen—con­gre­ga­tions of the worst kind.

There was a large con­gre­ga­tion of crowds at TTPost, where many lined up to col­lect grants and cheques and the pic­ture was the same at com­mer­cial banks. In one in­stance, scores of pen­sion­ers lined the street in San Fer­nan­do wait­ing for a bank to open, un­aware that the bank was open­ing its doors at 10 am and not the usu­al 8 am.

The chaos on the streets from San Fer­nan­do to Ari­ma and Port-of-Spain speaks to ac­tion be­ing tak­en with no clear plan.

The lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on many is­sues cre­at­ed an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion. Here was a case with scores of el­der­ly peo­ple, the high-risk group, sit­ting on the pave­ment or stand­ing so close to each oth­er that made it easy for this air­borne virus to be trans­mit­ted.

Com­mon sense should tell those in au­thor­i­ty that when de­ci­sions are tak­en to swift­ly make changes that af­fect busi­ness at the end of the month, chaos would reign.

It is heart­break­ing to see what the el­der­ly must go through month af­ter month to col­lect their pen­sion cheques, but it seems there was ad­di­tion­al pres­sure this month-end be­cause salary re­lief grants were al­so be­ing paid at TTPost.

There al­so seemed to be a sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced po­lice pres­ence on the roads, al­though of­fi­cers were on hand to con­trol some of the crowds at the larg­er gath­er­ings.

We know the Com­mis­sion­er must have a rea­son for de­cid­ing on the num­ber of of­fi­cers on du­ty yes­ter­day af­ter the suc­cess of the 19-hour cur­few. Some of his men might have been suf­fer­ing from not just burnout but the con­stant change of play in this COVID ball game in which the gov­ern­ment holds the key. Yes­ter­day marked the start of the Pres­i­dent’s procla­ma­tion for army per­son­nel to join the po­lice. Their pub­lic pres­ence was not sig­nif­i­cant.

Maybe af­ter what tran­spired yes­ter­day, things would be put in place to­day to have a more an­ti-COVID ap­proach be­cause sure­ly large num­bers of peo­ple gath­er­ing in one space to con­duct busi­ness con­sti­tute con­gre­gat­ing and this is against the reg­u­la­tions.

The coun­try needs a bet­ter plan to deal with virus con­trol oth­er than sim­ply a lock­down. Does the sci­ence or the of­fi­cials who fol­low the sci­ence ever think about the im­pact on the very hu­mans their sci­ence is sup­posed to pro­tect? Does much thought go in­to the process or is it that those who fol­low the sci­ence and make the de­ci­sions have no idea of what the av­er­age per­son goes through month­ly?

We note that the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has promised to look in­to the mat­ter and per­haps the Health Min­is­ter should do the same. If the men drink­ing on the Prom­e­nade brought a tear to his eye, think about what may hap­pen if he sees the re­al pain cit­i­zens face reg­u­lar­ly.