RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

On­ly a few die-hard drinkers made their way to their favourite bars in South Trinidad yes­ter­day morn­ing as re­stric­tions were lift­ed for the first time in three months.

The same was re­port­ed at restau­rants, casi­nos and gyms, forc­ing op­er­a­tors to in­tro­duce new guide­lines in the post lock­down pe­ri­od.

At the pop­u­lar Bomb­scare Bar at Welling­ton Road, Debe, on­ly three peo­ple were tak­ing a drink when we vis­it­ed.

That num­ber in­clud­ed one man sit­ting alone with two bot­tles of rum in front of him, to­geth­er with a bot­tle of wa­ter and a san­i­tary cup.

Ger­ard Rahim and his wife Karen were al­so seat­ed at the front hav­ing a drink. Rahim said he felt great about the re­open­ing of bars. Asked whether he took any ad­di­tion­al pre­cau­tions, Rahim said he came with his masks and was sat­is­fied that the bar had been prop­er­ly sani­tised.

At the pop­u­lar Dip’s Restau­rant and Bar on­ly one man was seen sip­ping a Stag. The own­er Kam­la See­di­al said she was ec­sta­t­ic that she could open once more.

She said up to 10 am, the turnout was poor.

“Nor­mal­ly here is very busy but it seems peo­ple are not spend­ing. We didn’t cook as much as we nor­mal­ly do be­cause we are not sure what the turnout will be for cus­tomers,” she said. She ex­plained that the past three months were very dif­fi­cult.

“We had to dip in­to our sav­ings. We had light bills to pay. Now that the bar is open we have put up plas­tic all around. We have re­moved some of the chairs to keep the cus­tomers apart and we are en­cour­ag­ing san­i­ti­za­tion, face masks and so­cial dis­tanc­ing,” she added.

Mean­while, busi­ness­man Ash­mir Mo­hammed who owns Club 2011, Club 2000, Boysie’s Hap­py Hole, 2000 Guest House and Bomb­scare bar said he ex­pe­ri­enced low turnouts in all of his es­tab­lish­ments. He ex­plained that loss­es were high dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od and thou­sands of dol­lars worth of drink had ex­pired.

Mo­hammed who has 30 peo­ple on his em­ploy­ment list said all of them were re­hired when the lock­down was lift­ed. He not­ed that many of them had fam­i­lies to take care of and had ex­pe­ri­enced hard­ship dur­ing the lock­down.

Mo­hammed said he al­so es­tab­lished COVID-19 guide­lines.

“We are not us­ing glass­es any­more. We are pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with dis­pos­able san­i­tary cups and nap­kins to cov­er their drinks. We are san­i­tiz­ing af­ter every cus­tomer and we are ad­vis­ing peo­ple to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing,” he added.

Mo­hammed said even though the turnout was poor, he was hop­ing that busi­ness will pick up soon.