A Gozo gym is struggling to come to terms with new COVID-19 measures which it says is making it more costly to open than it is to stay closed.

“Unfortunately the new measures have a lot of contradictions. It looks like they’re copying and pasting from other countries,” co-owner of Kinetika Gym Derrek Phillip told Lovin Malta.

Last Friday, gyms, bars and other non-essential retail stores were allowed to reopen for the first time in over two months. However, the condition of reopening came with a new set of safety measures to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

“We won’t open until we comply with the letter but it’s very contradictory and the arguments they make over cleaning the gym every hour is outrageous,” Derrek continued.

“It takes us two hours to clean the gym, we have to go from one member of staff to four at any given time. We are open 96 hours a week and we’re looking at potentially a couple of thousand a week in staff costs alone.”

It isn’t just gyms that are struggling to maintain the new standard of health and safety imposed by the COVID-19 measures. Hairdressers and bars have also had to fork out a fortune to reopen and some fear that they might have to close permanently in a post-COVID-19 world.

“At a practical level it’s not worth opening, we won’t be making money. We’re opening as a service for our members,” continued Derrek.

As retired police officers, Derrek and his wife went through the new regulations with a fine-tooth comb and were left perplexed about how some of these new measures came to be.

“The correct way to complete risk-assessment is to find one solution to one problem – if you have a perspex screen, why are you wearing a visor?”

“If three metres is a safe distance, why are you wearing a mask? As soon as you have more than one solution, people will work around it.”

Yet despite the setback, Kinetika gym is ready to welcome its members back and will open its doors tomorrow.

Kinetika is also in the process of disputing a €3,000 fine it incurred throughout COVID-19 while the gym was under refurbishment.

“When you have vague measures you have police officers who don’t really know what they’re doing. When enforcers are using their opinion instead of laws that’s when you end with a €3,000 fine,” he ended.

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