All Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) booths and Lot­to Cen­tres will re­open from Mon­day.

Malls and re­tail out­lets will re­open next Mon­day, but Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is warn­ing that this is on­ly be­ing al­lowed with the ex­pec­ta­tion that peo­ple take the COVID-19 vac­cine.

"These an­nounce­ments are in the con­text that we ex­pect the pop­u­la­tion to take ad­van­tage of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed," Deyals­ingh said.

The min­is­ter an­nounced the grad­ual re­open­ing of the econ­o­my at Sat­ur­day's Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date.

"An un­vac­ci­nat­ed cus­tomer speak­ing to and re­ceiv­ing ser­vice from an un­vac­ci­nat­ed sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive is a recipe for dis­as­ter," he said.

Deyals­ingh said af­ter meet­ing with the re­tail sec­tor, they learned that be­tween 90 to 100 per cent of all man­agers and se­nior staff were vac­ci­nat­ed but the cus­tomer ser­vice and ground floor em­ploy­ees num­bers were much low­er and ranged be­tween 20 per cent and 50 per cent.

"It does not match the vac­ci­na­tion rates of their su­per­vi­sors and peo­ple work­ing in ad­min and the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el," he said.

"Where things get a lit­tle bit dan­ger­ous is at the shop-floor lev­el, the blue-col­lar lev­el. And this is where your sales clerks are in­ter­act­ing with the pop­u­la­tion. Vac­ci­na­tion rates at those lev­els tend to drop off pre­cip­i­tous­ly," he said.

Deyals­ingh asked store own­ers, that, as they pre­pare to re­open next Mon­day, to work to­ward in­creas­ing the vac­ci­na­tion num­bers among their staff.

"As we bring out more and more per­sons, the risk to so­ci­ety and the risk to your health be­comes even more dan­ger­ous," he said.

"We urge op­er­a­tors of these booths to en­sure that mask­ing is there and that so­cial dis­tanc­ing is ob­served. Please do not al­low pa­trons to con­gre­gate around the win­dows of your booths and cause prob­lems," he said.

Deyals­ingh said that store own­ers had no con­trol over whether cus­tomers were vac­ci­nat­ed or not, but he was urg­ing any­one who want­ed to ac­cess re­tail out­lets to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

"We are ap­peal­ing to em­ploy­ees, sales clerks, de­liv­ery per­sons, clean­ers to fol­low the lead of your su­per­vi­sor, fol­low the lead of your man­age­ment team. If they took the vac­cine then you can trust them to lead you," he said.

Deyals­ingh said that there had been no dis­cus­sion about re­open­ing in-house din­ing just yet as it re­quired peo­ple to be un­masked in an en­closed space.

"We don't have a fixed time for in-house din­ing. We con­sid­er al­most every as­pect of the econ­o­my. The is­sue with in-house din­ing is it means tak­ing off your mask. And you see that same sta­tis­tic I gave for re­tail, that at the up­per lev­els peo­ple are vac­ci­nat­ed, the same ap­plies to all busi­ness­es," he said.

Deyals­ingh said that the wait­staff at restau­rants tend­ed to be "more un­vac­ci­nat­ed."

Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce CEO Gabriel Faria.

T&T Cham­ber hap­py, urges re­tail­ers to con­tin­ue push­ing on­line sales

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria on Sat­ur­day com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment on the an­nounce­ment but asked that re­tail­ers con­tin­ue to push the on­line sales and curb­side pick-ups to re­duce the risk of con­gre­gat­ing and trig­ger­ing an­oth­er shut­down.

"We be­lieve it is a step in the right di­rec­tion," he said in an in­ter­view short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment.

Faria called on all busi­ness­es to pro­vide a safe en­vi­ron­ment for both cus­tomers and work­ers and to en­sure all health pro­to­cols are ob­served.

"Where pos­si­ble, busi­ness­es should en­cour­age on­line trans­ac­tions be­cause it should not mean that peo­ple flock to stores and con­gre­gate," he said.

Faria said all busi­ness­es need­ed to do what was nec­es­sary to en­sure that there is not an­oth­er wave of the virus, which would mean an­oth­er lock­down.

Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce President Richie Sookhai.

Photo courtesy Richie Sookhai

Sookhai ques­tions min­is­ter's da­ta on ground-floor em­ploy­ees

Mean­while, the head of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Richie Sookhai ques­tioned the da­ta on the vac­ci­na­tion lev­els for cus­tomer ser­vice work­ers.

He said that ac­cord­ing to his in­for­ma­tion, in Ch­agua­nas, as much as 80 to 90 per cent of ground-floor em­ploy­ees were vac­ci­nat­ed.

"The on­ly ones who aren't are the ones who can­not take the vac­cine be­cause of preg­nan­cy or med­ical ad­vice. Or some have al­ready had the virus and are wait­ing for the clear­ance to take the vac­cine," he said.

But Sookhai al­so com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment for re­open­ing the econ­o­my as he said that busi­ness­es were suf­fer­ing.