Minister Bartlett issues stern shutdown warning
Published:Sunday | July 19, 2020 | 2:55 PM
Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has warned that tourism entities that fail to comply with health and safety protocols designed to facilitate the phased reopening of the tourism sector, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, will be shut down.
Speaking at the Golf View Hotel in Manchester, during a tour of the newly opened South Coast Resilient Corridor on the weekend, the minister stressed that, “If you are not COVID-compliant we are going to shut you down whether you’re big or you’re small, because we cannot compromise on health security.”
The new corridor was introduced on July 15. Similar to the North Coast Resilient Corridor, which was introduced in June, this area will welcome visitors with robust health and safety protocols.
Bartlett underscored the importance of tourism interests working in collaboration with various ministries and agencies, including the ministries of Tourism and Health and Wellness, in ensuring adherence to the protocols and effectively managing the process of containing the virus “to keep Jamaica safe, secure and seamless for ourselves first and our friends and visitors”.
“So, the message to the south coast is that this corridor is going to be managed as tight, if not tighter, as we are trying to manage the northern corridor, and breaches within this corridor are going to be met with very strong action,” said the tourism minister.
He continued that, “I’m not going to mince words on it, the instruction from me is to shut them down if they don’t comply. This is not just a south coast edict, this is a Jamaica edict, it’s for every tourism facility that is operating in Jamaica.”
Minister Bartlett outlined that Jamaica has to be strong in its resolve “because we recognise that we’re operating in a global community that is still not compliant fully”, with the spread of the virus being seen in Jamaica’s source markets “in a manner that is frightening to some of us”.
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