The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

An executive with a prominent restaurant says the tighter COVID restrictions “don’t make any sense” as he lamented the earlier curfew, indoor dining prohibition and discrimination in favour of hotels.

Allen Williams, Café Matisse’s assistant general manager, told Tribune Business he did not see how moving the nightly curfew’s start forward by one hour - from 11pm to 10pm with effect from tonight - will make a major dent in the current COVID-19 spike.

With his and other restaurants set to lose an hour of business from having to close earlier, Mr Williams added: “I don’t know what they think could happen in the night that can’t happen in the middle of the day at a bank or a food store. This just doesn’t make any sense.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Café Matisse significantly harder than some other restaurants because it does not have the same space to provide adequate outdoor dining, with the restrictions unveiled by the government on Friday mandating that all eateries move back to outdoor dining or takeaway only in a bid to curb the latest COVID infection surge.

“I can’t put my patrons outside for long because what if it rains? This is the rainy season. I don’t have the spacing or covering to protect them from the rain and I can’t bring them inside,” Mr Williams explained.

“I think this is going to hurt a lot of businesses. Luckily for us we have a few tables outside, but what about the restaurants that don’t have any seating on the outside? He should have thought about this.”

Renward Wells, minister for health, said on Friday that with effect from today “dining is restricted to outdoor and takeaways services, and it is encouraged that there be no loitering of groups outside restaurants or at fish fries. These restrictions, however, do not apply to hotel properties”.

The seeming discrimination against local restaurants, and in favour of rival eateries within resort properties, is something Mr Williams finds offensive. He said: “Wherever the tourists go they could move around but the brethren can’t move around?

“In any country where you travel to and they have a curfew, the curfew is in place for everybody. I believe we have a lot of people who come into this country who are vaccinated, but they are still able to spread the virus and they are still infecting people and not realising it.”

Café Matisse has strict rules regardless of the vaccination status of patrons. Mr Williams said “everyone” has to walk in with a mask on until they are seated at their table. He added that he has had to turn back several MPs for failing to wear masks and not presenting vaccination cards, including deputy prime minister, Desmond Bannister, and the minister for education, Jeffrey Lloyd.

Suggesting that every restaurant owner should be very strict about this, Mr Williams said Bahamians are “lowering their guard” and this is why COVID-19 infections are rising again.

Peter Maury, owner of the Green Parrot and Margaritaville restaurants, said he has not re-opened to indoor dining since the initial COVID-19 restrictions were imposed on restaurants last year. He cited difficulties associated with checking patrons’ vaccination status when they come in the door.

He added: “We’re outside anyway. So it doesn’t matter. We weren’t doing inside; it was too much. It was too much to do the inside, and all that was just too much of a hassle. You had to check everybody’s vaccination cards, and so we just didn’t even do that. We just went ahead and did outside.

“This is kind of the same thing for us. So we had a week or two of 11pm and now we’ve gone back. I guess it is what it is.”

Disclosing that he believes a vaccination pass for restaurants is being being created, Mr Maury said: “The Government uses a mobile app to check people who have been tested. I know 85 percent of the tourists coming in are vaccinated, and there are a lot of Bahamians that got the vaccine. So I don’t know why we don’t allow the same travel visa/five-day testing for vaccinated guests.

“There is a mobile app where the government allows people to check their five-day status and upload their information. They should make that accessible to the restaurants so we can check easily. I think they are working out the bugs on that one.”

Mr Wells announced in the House of Assembly earlier this year that restaurants will have available to them an online database that vaccinated people will be entered into. They will subsequently obtain a QR code to notify restaurant workers on who is and is not vaccinated.