Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@gau­r­dian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als strand­ed abroad who are in dire need of fi­nan­cial aid will soon be­gin get­ting as­sis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young said dur­ing a Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“In dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter this morn­ing, a de­ci­sion has been tak­en and he is go­ing to be ask­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to send cer­tain sums of mon­ey to our con­sulates, our mis­sions, our em­bassies in the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States to try and as­sist how we can with the lim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey sent to the most needy cas­es and the most le­git­i­mate of cas­es,” he said.

He said he would be work­ing with the coun­try’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in these coun­tries to en­sure that the mon­ey reach­es to those who are most de­serv­ing of the aid.

“I would be work­ing with those var­i­ous con­sulates, em­bassies and mis­sions us­ing the lists for re­quests for ex­emp­tions that we have at Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to try and iden­ti­fy those who may need when they come to those em­bassies, mis­sions and con­sulates ask­ing for help.”

He ac­knowl­edged the ini­tia­tive is go­ing to be a “very dif­fi­cult ex­er­cise” and an­tic­i­pates there would be those who would at­tempt to abuse the sys­tem.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the press con­fer­ence for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the amount of mon­ey bud­get­ed for the ini­tia­tive as well as how it would be con­duct­ed lo­gis­ti­cal­ly, Young not­ed that it was still in “the in­fan­cy stages.”

“As it goes along more in­for­ma­tion would ob­vi­ous­ly have to be put out so per­sons would know who qual­i­fies and how they ap­ply etcetera,” he said.

De­spite this, he hint­ed that it would on­ly be for those na­tion­als who briefly left T&T for short vis­its, “not the ones who were liv­ing and car­ry­ing on their lives out­side in these coun­tries.”

Be­gin­ning yes­ter­day and over the next few weeks, Young in­di­cat­ed, over 200 na­tion­als would be al­lowed to re­turn to the coun­try.

A to­tal of 76 re­turned from Grena­da yes­ter­day and a fur­ther 71 will re­turn from Cana­da to­mor­row.

In the next week and a half, 80 more will re­turn from the Unit­ed King­dom, Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East.