(Trinidad Guardian) National Security Minister Stuart Young says over 300 nationals stuck on a ship off Barbados will be allowed to come home if the cruise ship company agrees to quarantine them at sea off Trinidad and Tobago.
Young made the comment yesterday in the wake of the return of six nationals on Saturday night and the expected return of another 53 today from the Disney Fantasy cruise ship.
The six nationals who returned Saturday were taken to the University of the West Indies’ Debe campus for their 14-day quarantine.
Speaking on I95FM on Sunday, however, Young said he has also been in talks with Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas cruise ship, which is currently in Barbados waters with 300-plus nationals on board. But he said he was hoping to negotiate for a different approach to the quarantine process for that vessel, since the Government could not undertake to facilitate such a huge number of returning nationals.
He said once there are no positive cases in the 14-day period, the nationals on board would be allowed to go straight to their homes after leaving the ship.
“What I’m going to try to work out with the cruise ship company is come and anchor in our waters and let us do the quarantine of our cruise ship workers, those 300-plus on the ship, with our public health officials monitoring and doing the necessary medical assessments and examinations, hopefully no positive cases present and you come and you go home,” Young said.
He said he has also been in talks with the principals of the various University of the West Indies campuses to repatriate students there.
“What we have done is asked the principals of the three campuses, because there are various examinations dates and they are different in each campus, so I’ve asked them to work with us and work out the preferable dates for the students,” Young said.
He also assured that the Government would keep its promise to repatriate all T&T nationals desirous of returning home.
Young’s plan comes even as St Augustine MP Prakash Ramadhar has called for a committee to be set up to oversee the repatriation of Trinidadians currently stuck abroad. Ramadhar said now that there were no cases of COVID-19 in the country, the almost 1,000-bed stock no longer in use at the various institutions used to treat previous patients could be used to house the returning nationals.
