Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley oin Sat­ur­day as­sured that he would not shut down street vend­ing de­spite con­cerns that the huge crowds gath­ered to pur­chase food could fu­el more pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es.

Last March, dur­ing the first ma­jor lock­down, the Gov­ern­ment took some heat for clos­ing down street ven­dors while al­low­ing restau­rants to pro­vide take­away ser­vice.

At that time the dou­bles ven­dors cried dis­crim­i­na­tion, say­ing that the larg­er restau­rants were be­ing al­lowed to con­tin­ue their op­er­a­tions while the small­er busi­ness­es were suf­fer­ing from a loss of in­come.

This year, it's the re­verse.

Restau­rants have now been shut­tered com­plete­ly while dou­bles, gy­ros and oth­er street ven­dors are be­ing al­lowed to ply their trade.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter to find out whether the num­ber of peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing at street vend­ing sites would trig­ger an­oth­er sus­pen­sion of that ser­vice.

"They don't have to be," he said in a text re­sponse yes­ter­day.

He said that peo­ple would con­tin­ue to op­er­ate how they want­ed de­spite the warn­ings.

"Just blame some­body else and you are good to go," he said.

"Blame the Prime Min­is­ter, blame the Cab­i­net, blame the Min­istry of Health, blame the CMO, blame the Coast Guard," he said.

In the past few days, there have been sev­en re­port­ed cas­es of the Brazil­ian strain of COVID-19 in T&T. The first re­port­ed case was linked to a Venezue­lan mi­grant and there have been re­peat­ed the­o­ries that it was porous bor­ders and unchecked en­try of Venezue­lan mi­grants to blame for the spike in cas­es.

"Blame mi­grants, blame the po­lice," Row­ley said.

He said af­ter all that, peo­ple would start blam­ing the ac­tu­al virus "for not co­op­er­at­ing with us."

"Just go ahead and do what­ev­er suits our in­di­vid­ual fan­cy," he said.

"Pan­dem­ic, what is that?" Row­ley asked

De­spite the strong words, Row­ley said he was not frus­trat­ed about the sit­u­a­tion.

"I'm just be­ing fac­tu­al," he said.

"I have been ob­serv­ing this pop­u­la­tion on this is­sue and car­ry­ing the de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a year and a half.

"It just hap­pens to be my du­ty and I would not shirk from it."

CoP warns: Vi­o­la­tion would lead to shut­down

How­ev­er, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith warned that vi­o­lat­ing the Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions would lead to a shut­down for the day of the in­frac­tion.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the Com­mis­sion­er said he not­ed the "up­surge in street food vend­ing" and with it the con­ver­gence of crowds.

"Such non-ad­her­ence to the reg­u­la­tions will re­sult in the shut­down of these street food ven­dors, as it is their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that all cus­tomers con­form to the reg­u­la­tions by ob­serv­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing, not gath­er­ing in groups ex­ceed­ing five in num­ber, wear­ing their face masks and most im­por­tant­ly pro­vid­ing prop­er sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions for their cus­tomers," Grif­fith said.

"If they are un­able to con­trol those wait­ing to ac­quire their prod­ucts, the TTPS would be forced to close them for that day."

At Sat­ur­day's Min­istry of Health's COVID-19 up­date, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh cit­ed street ven­dors in San Fer­nan­do, Port-of-Spain, Curepe and Tacarigua and said he saw "dis­turb­ing videos" of the large crowds gath­ered to pur­chase food.

He warned that it was that type of con­gre­gat­ing that could lead to larg­er COVID-19 num­bers in the com­ing weeks.

Al­most 3,000 restau­rants shut down

Mean­while, sev­er­al busi­ness cham­bers are al­so now ques­tion­ing why street vend­ing was be­ing al­lowed while restau­rants and oth­er pe­riph­er­al busi­ness­es were shut down.

Head of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria said that the Gov­ern­ment need­ed the VAT, tax­es and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) that pri­vate busi­ness­es pro­vide es­pe­cial­ly as the State's in­come from the en­er­gy sec­tor has dipped.

Faria com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment on its de­ci­sions to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion but said that there were al­most 3,000 restau­rants in Trinidad and the in­dus­try shut­down would leave a mas­sive strain on street vend­ing.

"If you close 3,000 restau­rants but you leave ven­dors open, where do the peo­ple who were go­ing to the restau­rants go? They go to the ven­dors," he said.

"In­stead of spread­ing out the con­sumers, they are con­cen­trat­ed at the street ven­dors."

Faria said, "I am hope­ful that the Gov­ern­ment would re­con­sid­er, recog­nis­ing that a de­ci­sion tak­en in haste to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and the fact that that de­ci­sion is not hav­ing the de­sired out­come. I have to com­mend the Gov­ern­ment but they need to re­think the strat­e­gy."

Ac­cord­ing to Faria, in­stead of in­tro­duc­ing more re­stric­tions, there need­ed to be bet­ter com­pli­ance with the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tions.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Richie Sookhai said that restau­rants were bet­ter equipped to fol­low health pro­to­cols be­cause they have the in­fra­struc­ture to do so.

He said that street vend­ing was not much dif­fer­ent from curb­side or take­away ser­vices that the es­tab­lished restau­rants were al­ready of­fer­ing.

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chant As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is­sued a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day say­ing in­ter alia that "in ret­ro­spect, it may have been more ad­vis­able to have ini­ti­at­ed a com­plete shut­down for a short­er time pe­ri­od than the May 23rd date sim­i­lar to the blitz-type ap­proach re­cent­ly tak­en by Bar­ba­dos."

"At least in that case there would not be so much con­fu­sion about the choice of re­stric­tions such..." DO­MA said.

"Based on the ev­i­dence it seems, at least for now, that the on­ly way out of this threat­en­ing pan­dem­ic is for mass vac­ci­na­tions to oc­cur. We know that this has been the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States who are both in the midst of ma­jor re-open­ings and nor­mal­cy."