Chester Sam­bra­no

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has de­nied the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to re­open restau­rants in the first phase of the re­open­ing plan was aimed at ben­e­fit­ting big busi­ness­es.

On Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced restau­rants and road­side ven­dors would be able to op­er­ate un­til 8 pm with no dine-in ser­vices at the lo­ca­tions as part of the phase re­open­ing plan fol­low­ing weeks of COVID-19 lock­down re­stric­tions.

But some on so­cial me­dia crit­i­cised the move, call­ing it a mea­sure meant to on­ly ben­e­fit a few.

How­ev­er, speak­ing at yes­ter­day's COVID-19 news con­fer­ence Deyals­ingh said that is sim­ply not true.

"The dou­bles man can open; that's small, the nuts man can open, the pie­man can open, the small restau­rant can open, so I am re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the nar­ra­tive is be­ing made out there that we are on­ly open­ing big busi­ness."

He al­so not­ed that big busi­ness­es em­ploy thou­sands of peo­ple.

Over the week­end, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in par­tic­u­lar, called on the Prime Min­is­ter to open up small busi­ness­es and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.

Sev­er­al busi­ness cham­bers al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the con­ser­v­a­tive re­open­ing, say­ing many busi­ness­es were still not al­lowed to op­er­ate.

But Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed yes­ter­day by say­ing, "We can­not flip a switch and open every­thing at the same time."

He said if this is done "we would regress" and main­tained phase one would "start to stim­u­late some eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, get peo­ple back in jobs, it's a very fine line that we are walk­ing."

As more peo­ple are be­ing al­lowed out­side, Deyals­ingh once again ex­pressed ner­vous­ness about the roll­out. He said it would on­ly be if peo­ple ad­here to the pub­lic health guide­lines that they would not "see the up­surge in cas­es which we ex­pect from this week­end com­ing."

The Min­is­ter not­ed that all cas­es so far can be traced to im­por­ta­tion, "but with the re­lax­ation that starts to­day (Mon­day), we can­not blame im­por­ta­tion again, it will be lo­cal trans­mis­sion, it will be com­mu­ni­ty spread."