KEVON FELMINEkevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

There is now an air of hope­ful­ness and scep­ti­cism among cit­i­zens who are strand­ed aboard cruise ships fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to al­low them to come home.But the burn­ing ques­tion these em­ploy­ees now have is when will they be able to re­unite with their fam­i­lies and loved ones af­ter be­ing at sea for most of the year.

Fol­low­ing pleas for ex­emp­tions, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced yes­ter­day that he was work­ing with Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and oth­ers to de­ter­mine how the re-en­try of na­tion­als on the cruise ships could be sched­uled.

How­ev­er, Young gave no date on when this will be al­lowed:
“Ex­emp­tions for the en­try of na­tion­als in­to Trinidad & To­ba­go have been grant­ed con­sis­tent with en­sur­ing that we can man­age the num­bers be­ing quar­an­tined by the State to en­sure the con­tin­ued pro­tec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad & To­ba­go. We are go­ing to per­mit the en­try of our na­tion­als on these var­i­ous cruise ships by es­tab­lish­ing a sched­ule which al­lows us to man­age their re­turn, con­sis­tent with our re­sources to pro­tect them and the pop­u­la­tion,” Young said.

It was a turn­around from his po­si­tion on Tues­day when he told Guardian Me­dia that T&T’s bor­ders re­mained closed to both na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als.

He said the mea­sure was based on the pub­lic health ex­perts’ ad­vice and was an im­por­tant part of Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to re­strict the spread of COVID-19.

A na­tion­al aboard Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es Ltd’s (RC­CL) Vi­sion of the Seas, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said she was pleased Gov­ern­ment was now open to dis­cus­sions with the cruise lines to bring na­tion­als home.  

“This is a step in the right di­rec­tion and has fos­tered re­newed hope in the 300-plus T&T na­tion­als on board the Vi­sion of the Seas. There is a pal­pa­ble hum of ex­cite­ment on­board to­day. We ea­ger­ly await a time­line and plan for ex­e­cu­tion and look for­ward to re­con­nect­ing with our loved ones.”

The Vi­sion of the Seas left Mi­a­mi on May 15 in­tend­ing to drop off em­ploy­ees at var­i­ous Caribbean is­lands. May 30 was the sched­uled ar­rival date in Port-of-Spain but fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal, the com­pa­ny re­moved the stop from its itin­er­ary.
On Nor­we­gian Cruise Line Hold­ings’ (NCL) MS Ma­ri­na, em­ploy­ees felt they shouldn’t have had to beg to re­turn home.
“This de­vel­op­ment is bit­ter­sweet for me as a crew mem­ber aboard the ship. I am very ex­cit­ed to be ac­cept­ed back home but the process was em­bar­rass­ing,” one Tri­ni na­tion­al said.

“We had to beg and plead like dogs to our Gov­ern­ment to bring us back and to me this is ap­palling. We are the laugh­ing stock of the Caribbean na­tions. Imag­ine oth­ers had to plead on our be­half to get this Gov­ern­ment to takes its peo­ple. I am com­ing home but I am far from proud to be a Tri­ni.”

The MS Ma­ri­na is sched­uled to leave Mi­a­mi to­day and reach Ja­maica on Mon­day. From there it stops in Mex­i­co, Be­lize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma, Co­lum­bia and Grena­da be­fore ar­riv­ing in T&T on June 11.

There are al­so em­ploy­ees aboard the Celebri­ty Eclipse op­er­at­ed by Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es Ltd’s sub­sidiary, Celebri­ty Cruis­es.
In a let­ter to the Gov­ern­ment, an em­ploy­ee said the com­pa­ny has six ships an­chored off the coast of the Philip­pines.

These ships serve as quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties at the com­pa­ny’s ex­pense and are for crew mem­bers who are to be repa­tri­at­ed to the Philip­pines on a bi-week­ly ba­sis. She said the Gov­ern­ment can make that re­quest to the com­pa­ny as a con­di­tion for repa­tri­a­tion. She be­lieves this will pre­vent a bur­den on the coun­try’s re­sources or fa­cil­i­ties.