The Gov­ern­ment will be send­ing care pack­ages to Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents at uni­ver­si­ties abroad, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day.

At the dai­ly COVID-19 up­date brief­ing, Young said the Prime Min­is­ter had de­cid­ed to do so.

The prime min­is­ter asked the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance and Ed­u­ca­tion on Mon­day to get care pack­ages to lo­cal stu­dents at the UWI cam­pus­es of Mona and Cave Hill and for over­seas mis­sions to give some re­lief to stu­dents “out­side.”

On the pos­si­bil­i­ty of send­ing care pack­ages for T&T na­tion­als in Venezuela, Young said the mea­sure is meant for UWI stu­dents.

He said Gov­ern­ment was told that ho­tels where T&T peo­ple were in Venezuela, had placed costs at (US)$10 and fam­i­lies were be­ing asked to send help to those peo­ple.

He said lat­er down the line, Gov­ern­ment “may” look at send­ing pack­ages to those peo­ple, “but for now we’re fo­cus­ing on stu­dents.”

Re­gard­ing claims that na­tion­als in Suri­name were “out of food and mon­ey,” Young said he had spo­ken to an at­tor­ney for a mem­ber of the group as well as their em­ploy­ers who have en­sured they have mon­ey and are in ho­tels.

The mat­ter would be raised with the Suri­name gov­ern­ment.

Young al­so said UWI’s Debe cam­pus will be ready by to­mor­row as an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty for COVID-19 pa­tients.

It will have four dor­mi­to­ries and has oth­er fa­cil­i­ties which can be used if there is a surge of pa­tients.

He said the team prepar­ing that venue is the same one that worked on con­vert­ing the Home of Foot­ball (HOF) as a pa­tient cen­tre.

Thank­ing FI­FA and the TT Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion for of­fer­ing the HOF, Young said the army pre­pared the venue in less than 72 hours.

He al­so thanked all who as­sist­ed in­clud­ing re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, ANSA McAL for cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, Bea­con, Safetech, Robert Hadad and CEPEP.

Sin­gling out the army, he said per­son­nel have been se­cur­ing fa­cil­i­ties, mov­ing peo­ple from de­cant­i­ng cen­tres to fa­cil­i­ties and do­ing en­gi­neer­ing and oth­er work silent­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, dis­miss­ing per­cep­tion that sol­diers “on­ly shined boots.”

Young al­so said re­cent po­lice road­blocks were not based on the Stay-at-Home or­der and COVID mea­sures.

He said his Min­istry and po­lice had dis­cussed chal­lenges ahead and felt road­blocks were nec­es­sary.

“Crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty con­tin­ue af­fect­ing T&T, po­lice have the pow­er to have road­blocks at any time based on in­tel­li­gence or ev­i­dence or to check li­cences and in­sur­ance.”

He said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er said body cam­eras are be­ing worn by of­fi­cers so the truth would be known in these sit­u­a­tions.