RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Five of­fi­cers of the T&T Coast Guard and 32 Venezue­lans who were res­cued from a sink­ing ship off the coast of Ica­cos are now in manda­to­ry quar­an­tine for the next 14 days.

This was con­firmed by Pub­lic Af­fairs of­fi­cer at the T&T Coast Guard, Lt Kadi­jah Lamy.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Lamy said on May 20, the T&T Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel on the south coast of Trinidad that had crossed the closed bor­der from Venezuela in­to Trinidad. 

"The ves­sel had 32 per­sons on board. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the ves­sel was in­ter­cept­ed it was ob­served that it was tak­ing in wa­ter at a fast rate and was in dan­ger of sink­ing with all the per­sons on board," Lamy said.

All of the Venezue­lans were tak­en on board a TTCG pa­trol boat that was in the vicin­i­ty. 

"The TTCG pa­trol boat trans­port­ed the 32 per­sons to a land­ing area where they were med­ical­ly ex­am­ined by the Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials and it was de­ter­mined that none of them ex­hib­it­ed any signs of vi­ral ill­ness­es," Lamy said.

How­ev­er, in keep­ing with the Min­istry of Health's pro­to­cols, the Venezue­lans are be­ing kept in manda­to­ry quar­an­tine for 14 days. 

"Al­so in keep­ing with the Min­istry of Health pro­to­cols, the crew of the TTCG ves­sel has been placed in iso­la­tion," she added.

Lamy said the Coast Guard will con­tin­ue to pro­vide bor­der se­cu­ri­ty in the face of the threat of Covid-19 in or­der to main­tain the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of T&T through the con­duct of mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols with­in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.