The Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) wants Gov­ern­ment to lift re­stric­tions on bars and restau­rants, fol­low­ing the lat­est ad­vice from the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) on lock­downs.

In a re­cent in­ter­view, Spe­cial En­voy of the WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al on COVID-19, Dr David Nabar­ro, said lock­downs should not be used as the pri­ma­ry method of con­trol.

"The on­ly time we be­lieve a lock­down is jus­ti­fied is to buy you time to re­or­gan­ise, re­group, re­bal­ance your re­sources; pro­tect your health work­ers who are ex­haust­ed," Dr Nabar­ro said in an in­ter­view with The Spec­ta­tor.  "But by and large, we'd rather not do it."

Dr Nabar­ro adds: "We re­al­ly do ap­peal to all world lead­ers, stop us­ing lock­down as your pri­ma­ry method of con­trol…  Lock­downs have just one con­se­quence that you must nev­er ever be­lit­tle, and that is mak­ing poor peo­ple an aw­ful lot poor­er."

In light of this lat­est guid­ance from the WHO, the Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion wants gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er lo­cal COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

“The As­so­ci­a­tion will like to cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that bars and restau­rants ARE ON LOCK­DOWN as the present health or­di­nance has tak­en away the fun­da­men­tal ba­sis on which our busi­ness­es op­er­ate and are based on,” BOATT says in its re­lease.

BOATT ob­serves that both Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and CMO Dr Roshan Paras­ram are on record as stat­ing their ac­tions are in ac­cor­dance with WHO rec­om­men­da­tions and guide­lines, and that the “par­al­lel health care sys­tem is ful­ly equipped and has am­ple ca­pac­i­ty to deal with the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

“Be­cause of this, to­geth­er with the manda­to­ry mask leg­is­la­tion,” BOATT ar­gues, “there is ab­solute­ly no rea­son in which the gov­ern­ment can jus­ti­fy con­tin­ued re­stric­tions to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

BOATT adds: “The As­so­ci­a­tion stands firm in its po­si­tion that prop­er ad­her­ence and en­force­ment of the Min­istry of Health guide­lines are nec­es­sary at this time in all busi­ness and pub­lic set­tings, and would like to urge all bar own­ers to do so. The As­so­ci­a­tion al­so stands firm in its po­si­tion that all busi­ness­es that do not ad­here to the prop­er health guide­lines should feel the full brunt of the law.”