Renu­ka Singh

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again knocked Gov­ern­ment over its han­dling of repa­tri­at­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens strand­ed abroad by the lock­down of the bor­ders due to COVID-19, liken­ing this treat­ment to slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made this link be­tween the two dis­parate is­sues while speak­ing at the UNC’s vir­tu­al meet­ing on Thurs­day night, as she wad­ed in­to Gov­ern­ment yet again for aban­don­ing na­tion­als await­ing ex­emp­tions to re­turn home.

“You can­not aban­don over 10,000 cit­i­zens of your coun­try, you can­not do that. That is worse, I think, than slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers.

“But an­oth­er very shame­ful and sad and trau­ma­tis­ing thing is the way our Gov­ern­ment has treat­ed our strand­ed cit­i­zens who are abroad. They are like va­grants there, they are like state­less peo­ple, they have no home, no na­tion. You have dis­en­fran­chised them be­cause you will not bring them back in time to vote.”

She added, “But you have al­so tak­en away their ba­sic con­sti­tu­tion­al right of be­long­ing to a state.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while no in­di­vid­ual was “State­less”, the Gov­ern­ment had made the strand­ed cit­i­zens just that by aban­don­ing them.

“How are they liv­ing? 10,000 peo­ple. Our strand­ed cit­i­zens man, how can you do this?” she asked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had said it gave per­mis­sion for some 4,000 to re­turn home. But she ques­tioned the se­lec­tion process.

“What cri­te­ria did you use? How did you choose who should come in? If any Gov­ern­ment should be vot­ed out of of­fice on Au­gust 10, it’s the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment that should go, they must go,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed she shared her repa­tri­a­tion plan with Row­ley when they met to dis­cuss the COVID-19 plan. She said part of her plan was to bring back cit­i­zens while abid­ing by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) guide­lines.

She said she pre­sent­ed a five-pil­lar plan and that too was aban­doned by the Prime Min­is­ter, not­ing his on­ly plan was to close the bor­ders.

“They had no plan pre-COVID, no plan dur­ing COVID and no plan post-COVID,” she said.

She said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so now try­ing to in­cite fear by say­ing that she want­ed to re­open the bor­ders.

“Yeah, blame Kam­la again, when you as a Gov­ern­ment can­not have a plan or a pol­i­cy po­si­tion to repa­tri­ate our cit­i­zens back to where they be­long, our cit­i­zens want to come home, and they must be giv­en that chance,” she said.

“While they re­ject our cit­i­zens, hun­dreds of il­le­gal fel­las com­ing through the bor­ders and then you gonna bring hun­dreds more to play CPL.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that should the UNC form the next gov­ern­ment, they will bring all strand­ed cit­i­zens home while ad­her­ing to the WHO pro­to­cols which every oth­er coun­try was us­ing to bring back their na­tion­als.