Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

An­oth­er group of stu­dents study­ing abroad is ex­pect­ed to be giv­en the all-clear to re­turn home.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young con­firmed this yes­ter­day and al­so in­di­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment is al­ready as­sess­ing how to fa­cil­i­tate the repa­tri­a­tion of an­oth­er group of na­tion­als.

Young was re­fer­ring to stu­dents in Cu­ba and In­dia.

He ex­plained that the stu­dents in In­dia would be giv­en the ex­emp­tion to re­turn on the con­di­tion that they in­form the min­istry of their trav­el itin­er­ary, their ex­pect­ed ar­rival date and that they un­der­stand they would need to un­der­go manda­to­ry quar­an­tine up­on ar­rival.

Young al­so in­di­cat­ed the gov­ern­ment is ex­am­in­ing how to bring home cit­i­zens who are strand­ed in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Caribbean re­gion. He says dis­cus­sions would be held with Caribbean Air­lines as well as pri­vate char­ter flights to bring those cit­i­zens home.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that the gov­ern­ment would not al­low for oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion to be used as “jump­ing points for cit­i­zens.”

“Right now we have per­sons, a par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple, we grant­ed them ex­emp­tions. They flew from the Unit­ed States to an­oth­er Caribbean is­land and they’re wait­ing there to just jump across. We are not per­mit­ting oth­er Caribbean is­lands that have tak­en de­ci­sions to open up their bor­ders to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el to be used as jump­ing points, as launch­ing pads in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Young said.

Young and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh em­pha­sized that re­turn­ing na­tion­als home is a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act, with the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed to en­ter be­ing weighed against the avail­abil­i­ty of ac­com­mo­da­tion in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem.