CAMILLE McEACH­NIE

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber wants the Gov­ern­ment to re­open To­ba­go and use its re­open­ing as a test case to re­open Trinidad.

In a video mes­sage to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Oc­to­ber 14th, the cham­ber's chair­man, Mar­tin George, said the is­land's rel­a­tive­ly small size of 116 square miles is the ide­al place to test tourism-re­lat­ed COVID-19 poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.

“We are ask­ing that you ful­ly re­open the To­ba­go econ­o­my, use it as a test case, and let’s see if we can man­age it,” Mar­tin George urges in the video.

He added: “This is a win-win for both the Gov­ern­ment and for the peo­ple.”

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man ob­serves that the par­tial eas­ing of re­stric­tions, while a good start, do not go far enough, and has proven im­prac­ti­cal for tour op­er­a­tors in To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly.

Mar­tin George said times are hard on the is­land for every­one, and re­open­ing it can help.

"There is a tremen­dous lev­el of hard­ship be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by or­di­nary cit­i­zens," George said. “It can be a way to go give a boost and fil­lip to eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.”

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's Fi­nance and En­ter­prise Sec­re­tary, Joel Jack, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000 per­sons work­ing in the tourism in­dus­try have lost their jobs. He said tourism ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13 per­cent of the is­land's Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct.

Last Sun­day, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) called for coun­tries around the world to stop us­ing lock­downs as their pri­ma­ry COVID-19 con­trol mea­sure.