TT Chamber calls for communication on ZOSO

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has called for com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the im­ple­men­ta­tion and im­pact of Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions as the Gov­ern­ment moves to use the mea­sure in re­sponse to crime.

In a state­ment, the Cham­ber said it not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to de­ploy ZOSO as part of its se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse. The or­gan­i­sa­tion said crime and pub­lic safe­ty re­main is­sues for na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Cham­ber stat­ed that any spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure should be im­ple­ment­ed with­in de­fined time frames and as part of a wider strat­e­gy that in­cludes so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions. It said the pri­vate sec­tor is fo­cused on how ZOSO mea­sures may af­fect com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cham­ber, there is con­cern about how re­stric­tions con­nect­ed to ZOSO could af­fect com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es if the mea­sures are not ex­plained to the pub­lic. The or­gan­i­sa­tion said lim­its on move­ment, op­er­at­ing hours, or ac­cess to spe­cif­ic ar­eas could af­fect work­ers, cus­tomers, sup­ply chains, and busi­ness trans­ac­tions.

The Cham­ber said Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es could be af­fect­ed by changes to ac­cess and op­er­at­ing con­di­tions. It not­ed that un­cer­tain­ty around rules and time­lines may af­fect plan­ning and dai­ly op­er­a­tions.

The Cham­ber said it is call­ing for pro­to­cols that out­line how ZOSO will op­er­ate. It said ad­vance no­tice and en­gage­ment with busi­ness­es in af­fect­ed ar­eas are re­quired to re­duce dis­rup­tion.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween au­thor­i­ties and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty should con­tin­ue through­out the pe­ri­od of any ZOSO. It added that such en­gage­ment would sup­port eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty while al­low­ing se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives to be pur­sued.

The Cham­ber said it will con­tin­ue to share the con­cerns of its mem­bers as dis­cus­sions on ZOSO con­tin­ue.