Derek Achong

A pro­fes­sion­al mariner, of San Fer­nan­do, who has been strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos for over two months due to the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, is threat­en­ing to sue the State. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Marc Loren­zo Bod­den, of Gol­con­da, made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on Mon­day. 

In the let­ter, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Bod­den’s lawyers Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and Che Dindiyal claimed the min­istry’s re­peat­ed re­fusal to grant him an ex­emp­tion to re­turn to this coun­try was un­rea­son­able, ir­ra­tional, and ar­bi­trary and that the rea­sons giv­en for do­ing so were am­bigu­ous, gener­ic, and dis­mis­sive.

“Our client has been un­fair­ly treat­ed as oth­er na­tion­als have been grant­ed ex­emp­tion or­ders al­low­ing them back in­to Trinidad. Our client’s sit­u­a­tion is no dif­fer­ent,” Dindiyal said. 

Ac­cord­ing to Bod­den’s lawyers, the 50-year-old fa­ther of six left Trinidad to go to Brazil to com­plete a four-day nau­ti­cal train­ing course on March 14.

Short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing at his des­ti­na­tion, Bod­den learned of the Gov­ern­ment’s move to close the coun­try’s bor­ders to mit­i­gate the spread of the virus. 

Bod­den at­tempt­ed to change his flight but was un­suc­cess­ful. He vis­it­ed this coun­try’s em­bassy in Brazil and was ad­vised to trav­el to Bar­ba­dos via the Unit­ed King­dom, in or­der to have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn. 

When Bod­den ar­rived in Bar­ba­dos he was re­quired to un­der­go 14 days of manda­to­ry quar­an­tine and a COVID-19 test which re­turned neg­a­tive. 

While in Bar­ba­dos, Bod­den and the com­pa­ny he was con­tract­ed to re­peat­ed­ly wrote to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for an ex­emp­tion for him to re­turn to Trinidad to meet his con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, which were set to be­gin on May 6. 

In the let­ter, Bod­den’s lawyers claimed that he has been forced to spend US$5,000 in ac­com­mo­da­tion and liv­ing ex­pens­es and re­ly on the char­i­ty of strangers while strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos. 

They said that the sit­u­a­tion has dec­i­mat­ed his fi­nances as he is the sole bread­win­ner in his fam­i­ly and lost out on his con­tract when he was un­able to re­turn to Trinidad in May. 

“Not on­ly is it a men­tal and emo­tion­al chal­lenge for our client, but there is re­al dif­fi­cul­ty of his fi­nan­cial strain ex­tend­ing to his fam­i­ly,” Dindiyal said. 

Stat­ing that Bod­den feels like a refugee, Dindiyal ques­tioned why he was blanked while 33 mem­bers of a tour group, who were al­so strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos af­ter sim­i­lar­ly trav­el­ling there in a last-ditched at­tempt to re­turn home, were grant­ed ex­emp­tions and ad­mit­ted en­try on April 21. 

“It is al­so dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and in breach of our client’s right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty in the ex­er­cise of its func­tions un­der Sec­tion 4(d) of the Con­sti­tu­tion as per­mis­sion has been grant­ed to many oth­er sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced na­tion­als to re­turn home,” Dindiyal said. 

Through the pro­posed law­suit, Bod­den is seek­ing de­c­la­ra­tions against Young and an or­der com­pelling him to re­con­sid­er his ap­pli­ca­tion for an ex­emp­tion. He is al­so seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion. 

Dindiyal gave the min­istries 48 hours in which to re­ply to the let­ter. They had not re­ceived a re­sponse up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.