Renu­ka Singh

Gov­ern­ment has re­ceived high marks for its han­dling of COVID-19 and the eco­nom­ic and so­cial fall-out from the pan­dem­ic.

A re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Mar­ket Facts and Opin­ion (MFO) on­line sur­vey found over­all that cit­i­zens were sat­is­fied with the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the virus.

The sur­vey, pub­lished yes­ter­day, found that eight out of ten­peo­ple were sat­is­fied with the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to treat­ing with COVID-19.

“The re­sults of the study show both the high lev­el of trust in the Gov­ern­ment and at­ten­tion paid to the mes­sag­ing be­ing put for­ward and na­tion­al un­cer­tain­ty. The sat­is­fac­tion and con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions fur­ther af­firms pub­lic com­mit­ment to the col­lec­tive in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the MFO sur­vey re­port­ed.

The sur­vey found that even in the cur­rent un­cer­tain sit­u­a­tion, the pro­por­tion of those ex­press­ing op­ti­mism re­mains rel­a­tive­ly the same as in pre­vi­ous years.

“This is sup­port­ed by the con­fi­dence and sat­is­fac­tion with Gov­ern­ment mea­sures and the lev­els of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty tak­en to stop the virus’ spread. The eco­nom­ic con­cerns, how­ev­er, have the po­ten­tial to erode these sen­ti­ments of op­ti­mism de­pend­ing on the du­ra­tion of the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic,” the sur­vey found.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings, six in ten peo­ple in­di­cat­ed sat­is­fac­tion with Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial and so­cial re­lief ef­forts.

“Per­sons who ex­press dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures are more like­ly to be those who have ex­pe­ri­enced a re­duc­tion or loss of earn­ings with­in re­cent times,” the sur­vey found.

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, while about two in ten peo­ple suf­fered out­right job loss, sev­en in ten in­di­cat­ed that they were still able to main­tain loan pay­ments.

The sur­vey said con­cerns about eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty were at the fore­front for most re­spon­ders,

It al­so found that there was strong sup­port for the “clo­sure of bor­ders, schools and non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es. This ex­em­pli­fies the over­all pop­u­la­tion’s will­ing­ness to pri­ori­tise the mit­i­ga­tion of con­tact spread.”

The sur­vey al­so found that there was an in­creased pur­chas­ing of non-per­ish­able items, which it said is syn­ony­mous with dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness.

“(It) fur­ther re­flects the sen­ti­ment of un­cer­tain­ty. As many pre­pare for ‘what if’ both phys­i­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly, em­pha­sis is placed on the shelf-sta­ble life of the prod­ucts pur­chased,” it said.

The sur­vey found that while there was a move to­ward on­line en­ter­tain­ment, there was no ma­jor jump in the num­bers util­is­ing on­line pay­ment ser­vices.

But while Gov­ern­ment was giv­en high marks, the lo­cal me­dia took a hit.

“Two-thirds of the sam­ple per­ceive all oth­er lo­cal me­dia sources to be ‘some­what trust­wor­thy’. The tele­vi­sion chan­nels are re­gard­ed as the top of this list,” the sur­vey said.

It found that word of mouth and oth­er lo­cal sites are con­sid­ered the least trust­wor­thy with at least three in ten stat­ing they are ‘not very trust­wor­thy’.

Re­spon­dents seemed to have more con­fi­dence in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, as it was found to be the top source of in­for­ma­tion on COVID-19.

But de­spite the con­fi­dence in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, the sur­vey said “per­sons are less like­ly to ac­knowl­edge these sources as very trust­wor­thy com­pared to the lo­cal MOH (Min­istry of Health) brief­in­gs.”

“Four in ten per­sons re­gard the in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical com­mu­ni­ty as ‘very trust­wor­thy’, while al­most three in ten per­sons con­sid­er in­ter­na­tion­al news sites and in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia ‘very trust­wor­thy’. ‘Oth­er’ in­ter­na­tion­al sites, which in­cludes web­sites and so­cial me­dia, have the largest in­ci­dence of per­sons find­ing them ‘not very trust­wor­thy,” it found.