A Cen­tral, Trinidad bar own­er has be­come the first per­son to be charged for break­ing the re­cent­ly-im­ple­ment­ed COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Act reg­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, bar own­er Daryl Sir­ju, 29, was charged with op­er­at­ing his busi­ness along the South­ern Main Road, Cal­i­for­nia, on Fri­day night.

The re­lease said act­ing on in­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic, of­fi­cers went to the lo­ca­tion and found the bar opened for busi­ness and sales be­ing con­duct­ed. Sir­ju was stopped and im­me­di­ate­ly charged for breach­ing the Reg­u­la­tions of the Pub­lic Health Act.

Un­der the Pub­lic Health (2019) Nov­el coro­n­avirus (2019-Cov) Reg­u­la­tions, it is now an of­fence an of­fence to op­er­ate a bar whether or not a per­son is li­censed to do so un­der the Liquor Li­cences Act. Any­one found to have breached the reg­u­la­tion is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to im­pris­on­ment for six months.

Com­ment­ing on this dur­ing a tour of the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day warned peo­ple not to break the laws that are in force to pre­vent the spread of the virus, as such of­fend­ers can be ar­rest­ed and/or pros­e­cut­ed for of­fences.

Grif­fith al­so said of­fi­cers have al­so start­ed tele­phon­ing and vis­it­ing se­lect­ed peo­ple who were or­dered to be in self-quar­an­tine by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and his au­tho­rised staff for a pe­ri­od of 14 days af­ter re­turn­ing home from abroad.

“While many per­sons have been as­sessed to be com­pli­ant, some have not,” Grif­fith said.

Mean­while, for those peo­ple un­cer­tain if they will fall un­der the am­bit of an es­sen­tial ser­vice dur­ing the Stay-at-Home or­der which kicks in at mid­night to­day, Grif­fith said the TTPS is will­ing to ad­vise peo­ple who re­quire that in­for­ma­tion, not­ing he would al­so be the one to is­sue au­tho­ri­sa­tion let­ters for them to be out and about.