Unsurprisingly, a number of private sector bodies, including the country’s leading Business Support Organizations (BSOs), last week backed the government’s decision to lift the national curfew put in place following the 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, though whether or not they are prepared stand behind the strictures that are likely to remain in order to ensure what is still the clear and present danger posed by the malady does not come back to haunt the country, is a question yet to be answered.
Government and the private sector have not always been as one on the question of ensuring that the requisite strictures are in place to help keep the pandemic at bay. Back in late 2020. the Private Sector Commission (PSC), one of the BSO’s that have backed the removal of the curfew, had criticised the state-appointed COVID-19 Task Force for singling out the Palm Court Restaurant on Main Street in downtown Georgetown, for what the Task Force had said was the establishment’s sustained indifference to the protocols relating to the opening and closing hours for places of entertainment. Indeed, the government itself had come under fire for what some observers had felt was its ‘going easy’ on selected business houses including the restaurant and bar.