Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe says mem­bers of the Caribbean Pre­mier League con­tin­gent will not be treat­ed any dif­fer­ent­ly if any­one tests pos­i­tive for COVID-19 dur­ing their stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The tour­na­ment is sched­uled for Au­gust 18-Sep­tem­ber 12 and a con­tin­gent of over 251 peo­ple, in­clud­ing the play­ers, staff and oth­er stake­hold­ers, will be quar­an­tined at the Hilton Trinidad for its du­ra­tion.

But Cud­joe said if any­one tests pos­i­tive at any point in time they will go through the state pro­ce­dure. “We will have to bring them in­to the state fa­cil­i­ty just like any­body else who is test­ed pos­i­tive. Even though they are com­ing from their home coun­tries we can’t put them on a plane and send them back, so any­body who tests pos­i­tive in Trinidad and To­ba­go, whether they are a na­tion­al or a for­eign­er, whether they are an ath­lete or a staff mem­ber of CPL, they would have to go in­to and fol­low quar­an­tine pro­to­cols and go in­to the state fa­cil­i­ty and treat­ed just like any­body else,” Cud­joe said dur­ing a walk­a­bout in the Mt Hay/Fair Banks area in To­ba­go West yes­ter­day.

Com­ment­ing on state­ments by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the bor­ders were be­ing opened to ac­com­mo­date the CPL con­tin­gent while cit­i­zens were be­ing de­prived from re­turn­ing home to vote in the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Cud­joe said the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to bring cit­i­zens home.

“Well that wouldn’t be en­tire­ly true be­cause the past cou­ple weeks, the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing on bring­ing na­tion­als home. You would have seen hun­dreds of na­tion­als who would have been brought home, so that is a sys­tem be­ing man­aged by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Health and in the same fash­ion as the CPL de­ci­sion, care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Health,” she said