To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles is urg­ing T&T na­tion­als to lim­it their trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Charles said the move is nec­es­sary to re­duce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, which claimed its first fa­tal­i­ty on ear­li­er that day.

To­ba­go record­ed its first COVID-19 case on Mon­day and the per­son, who was in quar­an­tine af­ter ar­riv­ing on an in­ter­na­tion­al flight, has since been trans­ferred to Trinidad for fur­ther treat­ment.

It has been ar­gued that one of the best ways to pre­vent the spread of COVID is to prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing since the virus is spread through hu­man con­tact.

Charles stressed that peo­ple should now use the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice on­ly if it is nec­es­sary

“For those who are trav­el­ling or who con­tin­ue to trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, we urge you to trav­el for nec­es­sary pur­pos­es. I wish to re­mind us that much of the world pop­u­la­tion are sub­ject­ed to some sort of move­ment re­stric­tions,” Charles said.

“I have been ad­vised that Grena­da has re­cent­ly de­clared a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency, which un­der­scores the im­por­tance of the re­stric­tion of move­ments and for per­sons to move on­ly when it is nec­es­sary”

He added, “We can­not overem­pha­sise the im­por­tance of us ad­her­ing to some of these re­stric­tions. We con­tin­ue to hear and see our res­i­dents flout­ing some of the guide­lines ... I urge us to be par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful as we go about our dai­ly lives, but more im­por­tant­ly the re­stric­tions that we are ad­vised to ad­here to, let us stick with those guide­lines.”

Mean­while, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Joel Jack said con­ces­sions will be af­ford­ed to ten­ants who oc­cu­py prop­er­ties owned by the THA. He said they will not have to pay rent for their spaces dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the cri­sis.

“Prop­er­ties that are owned and man­aged by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, in­clud­ing the Cove Eco-In­dus­tri­al and Busi­ness Park, the Mil­ford Road Es­planade, Mi­cro Cen­tres at Calder Hall, Ar­gyle and Sig­nal Hill, as well as our beach fa­cil­i­ties such as Pi­geon Point and oth­er places, we are go­ing to ex­pand our Emer­gency So­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme with the ac­qui­si­tion of sev­er­al cards,” Jack said.

“We will en­hance our so­cial safe­ty nets sup­port mech­a­nisms to en­sure that our pro­grammes are ro­bust enough and that there’s dove­tail­ing be­tween the na­tion­al pro­grammes and the pro­grammes by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

Jack said in keep­ing with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s com­mit­ment to en­sure that for­eign ex­change is avail­able to To­ba­go en­tre­pre­neurs dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, dis­cus­sions will con­tin­ue to en­sure the THA re­ceives the nec­es­sary re­port as it re­lates to To­ba­go’s sup­ply of for­eign cur­ren­cy.