Event organisers hold emergency meetings

Event organisers have held emergency meetings in the wake of the Government’s rollback of public health measures because of rising covid19 cases. Announcements are expected to be made on Thursday about the fate of those events.

The organisers include the National Women’s Action Committee (NWAC) and the National Parang Association of TT (NPATT).

NWAC was scheduled to host its National Calypso Queen Challenge Edition at Queen’s Hall on April 25 and the parang association had a number of events planned to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

The Government on Wednesday announced a rollback of public health measures for a period of 21 days. The measures were to take effect from 12 am on Thursday.

The measures include a ban on in-house dining at restaurants, bars, casinos etc. Public gatherings were reduced from ten people to five.

NWAC’s president Natifa Alexander Romero said in a phone interview that the committee’s executive meeting will decide how it goes forward.

Queen’s Hall general manager Garfield George said as of Wednesday there were no changes in terms of events that have been planned.

“All of our events that were planned for the upcoming next couple of months, we had already taken steps and decisions as to how the business of those events would be conducted, which would have included all the protocols that exist now and the rules of social distance, maintaining physical distance in the audience.”

He added that the hall was taking an even closer look now at the number of performers on stage.

It will maintain measures such as sanitising on entry, temperature checks and people being ushered to their seats using the hall’s seat-mapping process.

“We have no instruction as to reducing the numbers even further,” George said.