Busi­ness lead­ers are ex­press­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the State of Emer­gency an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley but say it was a bit late in com­ing.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the an­nounce­ment, the co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Jai Lelad­hars­ingh said the SOE was "ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary and es­sen­tial."

"The re­al­i­ty is that the rate of COVID-19 in­fec­tions and deaths are in­creas­ing. To mit­i­gate these crit­i­cal risks, per­sons con­gre­gat­ing must be ful­ly dis­cour­aged. We are now urg­ing er­rant cit­i­zens who have been very lethar­gic and ap­a­thet­ic to­wards the health pro­to­cols to take these mea­sures se­ri­ous­ly," Lelad­hars­ingh said.

Not­ing that every­one must join to­geth­er to flat­ten the curve, Lelad­hars­ingh said, "We have reached a point where it is ei­ther we all swim to­geth­er or per­ish to­geth­er."

Penal/Debe Chamber of Commerce President Rampersad Sieuraj.

Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber: It is ex­treme­ly late

But the pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of In­dus­try Ram­per­sad Dhalip Sieu­raj said the Gov­ern­ment mis­man­aged the pan­dem­ic from the start.

"This is ex­treme­ly late in com­ing. Had it not been from the call of T&T Cham­ber, it may not have come. We have moved from hav­ing a few in­fec­tions per day to hav­ing hun­dreds of in­fec­tions per day. I would re­al­ly like to know why he wait­ed so long," Sieu­raj said.

"This Gov­ern­ment is yet to gov­ern. There is no ex­cuse or rea­son­ing about why they wait­ed for this cri­sis to reach this point. It shows a lack of gov­er­nance and the ab­sence of mak­ing the right de­ci­sion at the right time."

President of the Chaguanas Chamber of Commerce Rishi Sookhai.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber: Bet­ter late than nev­er

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce Rishi Sookhai ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to use its in­flu­ence to lob­by fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to as­sist floun­der­ing busi­ness­es if the SOE goes past May 23.

"The Prime Min­is­ter tried to hold back as much as pos­si­ble and I do be­lieve SOE came a bit late but it is bet­ter to be late now than nev­er," he said.

"The most im­por­tant thing we need now is herd im­mu­ni­ty so that we can start see­ing our way. We need to fol­low the pro­to­cols be­cause peo­ple are dy­ing and cas­es are go­ing up. We may not see the ef­fects of these lock­down mea­sures im­me­di­ate­ly but if the num­bers don't fall as dras­ti­cal­ly, there will be an ex­ten­sion of the lock­down."