Stakeholders ready for parties and events

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Since the start of the pan­dem­ic, pub­lic par­ties of any na­ture have been strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed bar­ring those around elec­tions. That ban will be lift­ed come Mon­day and the in­dus­try which suf­fered some of the worst eco­nom­ic fall­out of the out­break will be giv­en some breath­ing room.

How­ev­er, while many are ea­ger to make up for lost time, the lessons of the pan­dem­ic will not be for­got­ten and will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to these events.

Ac­cord­ing to Res­i­dence Lounge op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Kee­gan Knights, the lift­ing of the ban, abo­li­tion of safe zones and re­turn to 100 per cent ca­pac­i­ty gives the es­tab­lish­ment the nec­es­sary tools to re­cov­er lost in­come, es­pe­cial­ly through par­ties and spe­cial events which it has be­come pop­u­lar for. Yes­ter­day, he said par­ties and events will re­sume at the lounge “from the get-go on April 4.”

“We’re go­ing to be go­ing full force with that,” he told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

But while the coun­try’s epi­demi­ol­o­gy is more favourable than just six months ago, the pan­dem­ic is still very much in swing. This is why Knights said pa­trons of the night­club will be sub­ject to ad­di­tion­al pro­to­cols. This in­cludes the usu­al pro­ce­dures the world has now got­ten ac­cus­tomed to — fre­quent sani­ti­sa­tion, so­cial dis­tanc­ing be­tween groups and manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing while not con­sum­ing food or bev­er­ages. How­ev­er, he said pa­trons will now be re­quired to make reser­va­tions to at­tend.

“Every­body that’s en­ter­ing the club is go­ing to be asked to make reser­va­tions. So we ask every group in every sec­tion, the per­son that re­serves the area, we’re go­ing to have their name and their guests as well. (It’s) go­ing to be used as a form of con­tact trac­ing,” he said.

Par­ty boats will al­so be im­ple­ment­ing safe­ty pre­cau­tions, as they too will be al­lowed to re­sume op­er­a­tions.

A spokesper­son for the T&T Plea­sure Craft As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­CA), Stephan Mc­Connie, re­ferred to the re­stric­tions’ lift­ing as “the first piece of good news we’ve got­ten in two-plus years.”

He said around a dozen large op­er­a­tors were forced to shut down since the pan­dem­ic be­gan and be­tween 200 and 300 em­ploy­ees had been put on the bread­line as a re­sult. He said the rip­ple ef­fect on down­stream busi­ness­es— such as boat main­te­nance com­pa­nies and cater­ers et cetera—is al­so wide-reach­ing.

De­spite the “par­ty boats’” and tour boats’ ela­tion with the news, he not­ed that they’re cog­nisant of the risk the pan­dem­ic still pos­es.

“At the same time, we are be­ing very cau­tious with it be­cause like any­body else, we don’t want to see an­oth­er wave, so we have spo­ken among the as­so­ci­a­tion and we are go­ing to take the nec­es­sary steps to con­tin­ue safe­guard­ing our crew, our busi­ness and the pa­trons as well,” Mc­Connie said.

“We plan to con­tin­ue sani­ti­sa­tion be­fore board­ing. We plan to con­tin­ue sani­ti­sa­tion of ves­sels be­tween trips and al­so we will obey the or­di­nance…in terms of mask-wear­ing and all these dif­fer­ent things.”

Mc­Connie, the own­er of Don’t Drink In­doors Down d Is­land boat tours, was forced to close his op­er­a­tions dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Restart­ing, he said, will take him some time.

“We’re hop­ing to re­sume op­er­a­tions no lat­er than mid to end of May, which gives us enough to put things in place pro­to­col wise, safe­ty-wise. Re­mem­ber our ves­sels have been down for a while, so we have a lot of work to do to en­sure the sta­bil­i­ty of the ves­sels and safe­ty pro­to­cols with­in the mar­itime sec­tor,” he said.

He lament­ed, how­ev­er, that the re­cov­ery from debt in­curred over the pe­ri­od will take him “a cou­ple of years.”