Trinidad nationals stranded in The Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian seek help

(Trinidad Guardian) Sur­viv­ing Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an for six Trinida­di­an na­tion­als in The Grand Ba­hama is­lands in Freeport al­most two weeks ao is on­ly half their night­mare. Now strand­ed in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas and mon­ey in their pock­ets run­ning low, they are ask­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment to get them on a flight home.

“We need help from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment. It’s re­al­ly hard to get food and wa­ter and since we got off from the is­land of Grand Ba­hama we have to buy things. We al­so had to use our mon­ey in Freeport and now we reach a po­si­tion where we need help to go back to Trinidad,” said Brent Wil­son, one of the strand­ed men on Sat­ur­day.

 
A fel­low Trinida­di­an Dar­ney Gre­go­ry, who lives in Nas­sau, has opened his two-bed­room apart­ment to Wil­son, Pe­ter Nash and De­clan Vial­va.

Nash,who grew up with Gre­go­ry in Siparia, said his friend did not hes­i­tate to as­sist him and his co-work­ers.

The three men now share a cramped bed­room with two air mat­tress­es.

The oth­er three Trinida­di­ans—Mark Mar­tin, Nigel Williams and Adisa Mar­cano—are all stay­ing at the homes of friends in Nas­sau, hop­ing to leave on the next avail­able flight to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our fam­i­lies want us back home and we were hop­ing that by Sun­day (to­day) we would have been back home,” ex­plained Nash.

Nash said that sol­diers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force had vis­it­ed them on Fri­day , took all their in­for­ma­tion and as­sured them that they would com­mu­ni­cate with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to get them home soon.

The TTDF sol­diers, who met GML out­side the Breezes Ho­tel where they were stay­ing, said they were go­ing to drop off food for the men. They al­so con­firmed that the in­for­ma­tion about the men’s predica­ment had al­ready been re­layed.

But the Trinida­di­ans who all worked for a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny on the is­land do­ing weld­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing are grow­ing weary of the wait­ing game af­ter their near-death ex­pe­ri­ence. “We en­dured three days of pound­ing rain and ride it out in a two-storey build­ing and af­ter that, food be­came an is­sue and then trans­port to get off the is­land. Now we just want to go home,” Wil­son said.

He said they were frus­trat­ed by at­tempts to reach their em­ploy­er, who had not even of­fered to buy their plane tick­ets to go back to Trinidad. “We called them, we sent them mes­sages and they on­ly re­spond­ed re­cent­ly.”

He said the sec­re­tary of the com­pa­ny had on­ly sent him What­sApp mes­sages re­cent­ly say­ing they were sor­ry and “feel bad” and know “their fam­i­ly can­not hear from them,” but has still not of­fered a so­lu­tion to their prob­lem.

Hur­ri­can Do­ri­an slammed in The Grand Ba­hama and Aba­co is­lands flat­ten­ing every­thing in its path and killing at least 50 peo­ple to date. At least 1,300 are still feared miss­ing. Thou­sands of peo­ple have been dis­placed and have been trans­ferred to the is­land of Prov­i­dence in Nas­sau, the coun­try’s cap­i­tal where they are be­ing housed at a makeshift camp and sev­er­al ho­tels.