By YOURI KEMP
Tribune Business Reporter
ykemp@tribunemedia.net
Food retailers yesterday said it was going to be "difficult" to manage and enforce the Government's latest COVID-19 shopping protocols.
Bradley Rolle, general manager of Centreville Food Market, told Tribune Business that asking customers whether they were permitted to shop on a certain day effectively turned food stores into policemen. His comments came after the prime minister said all households will be required to designate one person as their shopper, who will only be allowed to shop on particular days based on their surname's first letter.
The move is designed to reduce the long queues waiting to access food stores, and ensure customers abide by social distancing protocols, but Mr Rolle said: "The thing about that with the government deciding that they want certain people to shop on particular days is: How do you police that?
"You are going to have to ask customers who walk in on a Monday if their name begins with A through M. That's going to be difficult to do. The reason for that is, that with this location here in Centreville, we have had issues with people staying six feet apart and queueing on the lines.
"Now, to have to keep people honest by asking them to present identification to verify that they are shopping on the right day, man, that is a hard thing. That is difficult, but if that's what it gets to I guess we are going to have to do it."
Mr Rolle added: "I don't mean this in any negative or disparaging way, but the reality is from when this emergency order has come into existence, the government has been trying to see how honest people are by asking them only to go out if they have to go to a food store to get food or lunch, or to a gas station.
"But with the average Bahamian, everybody is on the streets because they are going to the food store or gas station or restaurant or whatever have you. Our Bahamian people are not honest, so it is difficult to deal with them in this particular order."
Mr Rolle continued: "The only way this will work, and I understand what the world and the government is trying to do, as the virus is being moved by people. In order to stop the virus you have to stop people, and the only way to do that is to shut everything completely down.
"Nobody moving, for at least 14 days. Then the reality is that we have people who don't have the means to feed themselves for 14 days. They don't have means to buy food for 14 days. We have old people that need special medication, we have people who have special needs, we have over 40,000 students from school who eat on a daily basis. It is difficult it is a conundrum."
Emphasising that he understood what the government is trying to achieve, Mr Rolle added: "The reality is if you go on the streets now it seems like business as usual. We are under a 24-hour curfew but the streets are packed with cars. There may have to be some drastic or draconian measures that may have to come into play if we really get into a bad situation.
"We have over 400,000 in The Bahamas and we are only at 11 [15] infected, but realistically we are not doing that bad. We are not completely out of the woods, but we are not doing that bad. The government is going to have to do what they have to do in order to contain this.
"The food stores are going to have a hard task trying to manage people coming into the stores on certain days. The reality is keeping people honest."
Cyril Carey, general manager of Kenneth's food store on Prince Charles Drive, added of the new measures: "I'm not sure, you know? I know it should be a good thing, one way or the other, for the fact that a lot of people were flocking the stores.
"If we're watching what is going on around the world we really need to do something about the flow of social distancing because it has been rough. But, to me, business has slowed down a bit now. Everybody has more or less come back to normalcy in a way. That's how it seems to me. I don't think we need a designated shopper list any more."
Comments
Well_mudda_take_sic 3 years, 12 months ago
What a profound thing for Bradley Rolle to say.
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