De­spite an ap­peal by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for un­der­stand­ing and tol­er­ance to­wards per­sons re­cov­er­ing from the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), res­i­dents of Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, re­mained adamant yes­ter­day that they do not want them in their com­mu­ni­ty.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, one woman, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, sug­gest­ed us­ing the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s 72-room ho­tel in Cou­va to house re­cov­er­ing pa­tients, not­ing that venue re­mains un­opened.

“That fa­cil­i­ty is clos­er to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and it al­so has the iso­la­tion and acreage they need for these re­cov­er­ing pa­tients,” the woman said.

Re­fer­ring to the fa­cil­i­ty at Bridge Road where the min­istry pro­pos­es to house the pa­tients, she said it was not prop­er­ly se­cured, as the front wall is on­ly four feet high, the back of the prop­er­ty is un­fenced and on­ly a chain-link wire-fence sep­a­rates it from the near­est prop­er­ty which is me­tres away. She ac­cused the Min­istry of Health of fail­ing to car­ry out prop­er re­search be­fore de­ter­min­ing the suit­abil­i­ty of the venue as a step-down or hold­ing bay fa­cil­i­ty.

“Close to 70 per­sons live in­side here and close to that fa­cil­i­ty are el­der­ly peo­ple over the age of 65. They need­ed to do more re­search on the area’s pop­u­la­tion be­fore de­cid­ing it was a good place,” she said.

De­spite this, she ap­plaud­ed the ra­tio­nale be­hind set­ting up such fa­cil­i­ties.

“I have no is­sue with them need­ing to put the peo­ple some­where, I agree with it, but when you look at where the home is, it is mere me­tres away and not acreage as they are claim­ing. In­side Brook­lyn, the land is acreage but the hous­ing isn’t.”

She said this was why they took their con­cerns to San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Anil Juter­am.

“We are not scorn­ing any­one but this is a scary sit­u­a­tion be­cause at that fa­cil­i­ty, the acreage is the emp­ty land to the back of the prop­er­ty with fruit trees. Every house is prob­a­bly on an acre and a half of land but be­tween house to house, it is not an acre that sep­a­rates them.”

She said they learned yes­ter­day that sol­diers, who have been at the fa­cil­i­ty since res­i­dents staged a fiery protest over the pro­pos­al, will be stay­ing at the Brook­lyn Set­tle­ment Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. The sol­diers will be us­ing the cen­tre as a base for the du­ra­tion of the time they will be re­quired to guard the res­i­dents at the step-down fa­cil­i­ty. A sec­ond res­i­dent told Guardian Me­dia that al­though he was still up­set over the pro­posed move, he al­so recog­nised that the au­thor­i­ties will do what they want re­gard­less of how they feel.

One res­i­dent who on­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as Dark­man said, “It had more po­lice than cars up on this side. It’s a pa­trol every five min­utes but the area re­al qui­et.”

Pro­vid­ing a help­ing hand to his neigh­bour as he spoke with Guardian Me­dia, Dark­man added: “It’s not a mat­ter of dis­crim­i­na­tion but peo­ple are fright­ened, we don’t know what to ex­pect. No­body would want them be­ing moved in­to a house next to where they live so why they forc­ing us to ac­cept that?”

He said he will be keep­ing more to him­self now as a fur­ther pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure to en­sure he does not con­tract the virus.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, Juter­am, who has been op­er­at­ing as a con­duit be­tween the po­lice and res­i­dents to en­sure there is an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion, Juter­am said: “The man­ner in which things were done ini­tial­ly is what trau­ma­tised the res­i­dents. There was a clear breach of pro­to­cols where the peo­ple weren’t sen­si­tised.”

He said oth­er ques­tions were now be­ing asked, in­clud­ing whether or not the build­ing has the rel­e­vant ap­provals from the OSH Au­thor­i­ty, Fire Ser­vice and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

“My du­ty is not to come down on the vic­tims. I am very sym­pa­thet­ic to­wards them be­cause in the morn­ing…it could be my fa­ther or broth­er. This is a cri­sis the coun­try is fac­ing and I am a pa­tri­ot first and fore­most but I al­so un­der­stand the fears the res­i­dents are ex­press­ing,” Juter­am said.

Res­i­dents re­port­ed­ly on­ly learned of the move to re­lo­cate re­cov­er­ing pa­tients to a for­mer home for the aged around 5.30 pm Fri­day, when pam­phlets about the virus were hasti­ly dis­trib­uted by au­thor­i­ties.

Hours lat­er, a group of res­i­dents blocked Bridge Road with burn­ing de­bris to con­vey their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the de­ci­sion, claim­ing they had not been con­sult­ed. Po­lice and sol­diers were sent in on Sat­ur­day to keep the peace. (See Page 8)