Scores of peo­ple gath­ered at the Bethel ‘The House of God’ church in Freeport on Thurs­day night for its an­nu­al memo­r­i­al ser­vice, de­spite in­struc­tions by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that there should be no more than ten peo­ple in pub­lic gath­er­ings.

The in­struc­tions were is­sued on Wednes­day as part of the re­sponse to the spread of the COVID-19 virus in T&T but Pas­tor Dal­ton Bruce dis­re­gard­ed that or­der last night as mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion flocked to the event.

Res­i­dents at Cal­cut­ta #2, Freeport, where the church is lo­cat­ed, raised con­cerns when they saw car­loads of peo­ple pulling up at the church’s com­pound, not­ing that there were a lot of el­der­ly and vul­ner­a­ble folks liv­ing near­by and they were very fear­ful of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The ser­vice start­ed at 7 pm and a par­ty of po­lice ar­rived at the com­pound and spoke to of­fi­cials be­fore 8 pm and then left. How­ev­er, a sec­ond par­ty of of­fi­cers ar­rived at about 9 pm and stood guard on the road while Bruce preached to the gath­er­ing.

From the road, Bruce could be heard lash­ing out at the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing that they al­lowed COVID-19 in­to the coun­try by al­low­ing Car­ni­val to go on.

“Take it in your mouth now...lock me up if you want, I’m talk­ing the truth,” Bruce shout­ed.

He al­so threw words at the po­lice of­fi­cers who were in the road, say­ing “they can wait there to lock me up...I will have them wait whole night if I have too.”

Af­ter the pas­tor stopped preach­ing at about 9.50 pm, an­oth­er church of­fi­cial graced the pul­pit to say there were no COVID-19 cas­es at the ser­vice. He then an­nounced that they would be stop­ping ser­vices on Sun­day and would ad­vise fur­ther. He al­so said be­cause of com­plaints from neigh­bours they had erect­ed a fence.

They al­so de­fi­ant­ly told the po­lice that they are not break­ing any law but re­mained com­mit­ted and would com­ply.

Church of­fi­cial Anand Ram­roop lat­er told the Guardian Me­dia that the spe­cial sev­en-night memo­r­i­al meet­ing is an an­nu­al event and start­ed over the week­end.

Ram­roop, how­ev­er, not­ed that un­der in­struc­tions of the pas­tor, they prac­tised so­cial dis­tanc­ing in the event by hav­ing peo­ple sit three feet from each oth­er and warned that there be no hug­ging, kiss­ing and shak­ing of hands. He al­so not­ed that hand san­i­tiz­ers were be­ing used to sani­tise the hands of peo­ple and al­so their ve­hi­cles.

Ram­roop said the con­gre­gants from its branch church­es in Ce­dros and Guayagua­yare were asked not to make their way to Freeport for pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures. He claimed that they had no­ti­fied po­lice of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion about the event.