Gail Alexan­der

About 10,000 na­tion­als have sought ex­emp­tions to come home and even Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s daugh­ter in New York want­ed to re­turn, but she wasn’t al­lowed or en­cour­aged to do so.

How­ev­er, ex­emp­tions could in­crease ac­cord­ing to what sort of su­per­vised quar­an­tine peo­ple agree to have.

Row­ley spoke about these sit­u­a­tions at a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

His brief­ing fol­lowed yes­ter­day’s re­port by a woman called Joanne Pan­tin who had tear­ful­ly begged for ex­emp­tion to re­turn home.

He said if there was a way to reach out to that per­son in­di­vid­u­al­ly, the Gov­ern­ment would find it.

“No one is be­ing aban­doned or pun­ished,” Dr Row­ley said about peo­ple lob­by­ing to re­turn.

“There’s no de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy to tram­ple on any­one’s rights. We’re try­ing to pro­tect every­one’s life, es­pe­cial­ly those with­in T&T’s bor­der.”

He said Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the COVID- 19 virus em­pha­sised pre­serv­ing lives. Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed ex­emp­tions for re­turns would be al­lowed on a man­aged ba­sis so hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty wouldn’t be af­fect­ed by large num­bers en­ter­ing.

Of the 330,000 na­tion­als over­seas, he said 275,000 live in the US. But there is a cat­e­go­ry of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 who were “out­side” when bor­ders closed and may need ex­emp­tions.

The ma­jor­i­ty is from the US.

Gov­ern­ment has so far grant­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,515 ex­emp­tions but the ma­jor­i­ty of those haven’t ar­rived due to trans­port dif­fi­cul­ties, he said.

He added the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, in grant­i­ng ex­emp­tions to the ini­tial num­ber of na­tion­als in Cana­da, the UK, the Mid­dle East and Eu­rope, asked peo­ple if they wished to pay for state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine or if they re­quire state quar­an­tine.

“De­pend­ing on the re­spons­es, the num­ber of ex­emp­tions may in­crease to al­low us to bring cer­tain per­sons un­der those con­di­tions,” he added.

This will be on a case by case ba­sis.

Row­ley added, “If there are ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tions like the woman who made the video that caused the news­pa­per head­line (yes­ter­day), if there was a way to reach out in­di­vid­u­al­ly to that per­son then we’ll find it.”

But he said if he in­struct­ed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to send mon­ey to her to pay for her room or buy food, then every­one else who had a claim would say, “Look at me too” and ac­cuse Gov­ern­ment of pref­er­en­tial or un­equal treat­ment.

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment had to look at the sit­u­a­tion as name­less, face­less cas­es, he added, “There are peo­ple out there in hard­ship. Of course, we un­der­stand and em­pathise, but the pol­i­cy can’t be who gets on TV first or who cries on TV. You won’t have an ef­fec­tive sys­tem. If you say ‘OK’, the next ap­pli­cant will sim­ply say they’re sick,” he said.

He said, “On the oth­er hand it’s on­ly when you get to the per­son­al lev­els and you see the pain and hard­ship, then you be­gin to think that ‘maybe we should make de­ci­sions based on emo­tion and let every­body come in’ or let (in) peo­ple from heav­i­ly in­fect­ed ar­eas in large num­bers. What does that do to the pol­i­cy up­front of (pre­serv­ing) lives and liveli­hood?’’

Row­ley’s daugh­ter want­ed to re­turn

Row­ley added, “My daugh­ter in New York want­ed to come home. Her sis­ter is hav­ing a ba­by. She want­ed to be part of this fam­i­ly mat­ter. But she wasn’t al­lowed to come—not even en­cour­aged to ap­ply as I know how this would have played out.”

“I lived through the trau­ma of the New York sit­u­a­tion with my daugh­ter in Ground Ze­ro. I have close fam­i­ly mem­bers in Texas and Cal­i­for­nia who sit in their homes afraid to come out in the streets—so I un­der­stand per­son­al­ly what peo­ple are suf­fer­ing in this mat­ter.”

“While we em­pathise and sym­pa­thise, we do the best we can to min­imise the pain of those out­side T&T and the bor­ders will have to re­main closed,” he said, adding this will be so as long as the out­side re­mains what it is.

He said it was dis­ap­point­ing emo­tions were be­ing used as the yard­stick for how the mat­ter was be­ing viewed.

“Let me tell you, the virus is still there and a dan­ger es­pe­cial­ly if you have to im­port peo­ple from an area which might very well be the most in­fect­ed area in the world, we have to be ex­tra care­ful.”

This week a batch of peo­ple will ar­rive from Grena­da. A CAL flight will bring oth­ers from Toron­to.

Peo­ple have al­so been repa­tri­at­ed from Guyana, Venezuela, Suri­name, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­ba, St Maarten, Ja­maica and from cruise ships, as well as UWI stu­dents from Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos.

Ar­eas were main­ly cho­sen since they are close to T&T and had low in­fec­tion lev­els.

Peo­ple al­so re­turned from the US—in­clud­ing the PNM’s Pen­ny Beck­les and the UNC’s Bar­ry Padarath.

He added that the close­ness to T&T and low in­fec­tion lev­els were two things that gov­erned how ex­emp­tions were grant­ed.

Peo­ple in In­dia, the Mid­dle East and Eu­rope al­so got ex­emp­tions.

The el­der­ly, those with med­ical emer­gen­cies and peo­ple with small chil­dren were al­so giv­en con­sid­er­a­tion plus en­er­gy sec­tor work­ers to keep the sec­tor run­ning.

He said most of T&T’s con­tacts were com­ing from the US which has nu­mer­ous cas­es. It would have been ir­re­spon­si­ble to have fol­lowed COVID poli­cies and not care­ful­ly man­aged the flow of peo­ple from those over­seas ar­eas in­to T&T.

“It doesn’t take a boat­load of peo­ple to in­fect T&T. All it takes is one per­son, a su­per spread­er.”