To Stu­art Young, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Dear Sir,

I am writ­ing be­cause my fa­ther is cur­rent­ly abroad and is think­ing of sub­mit­ting a re­quest for an ex­emp­tion to re-en­ter Trinidad. He trusts that you will give it fair and rea­son­able con­sid­er­a­tion. I, on the oth­er hand, do not share his op­ti­mism. And since I sus­pect that he will be de­nied, as so many na­tion­als have been, I want­ed to ex­press my thoughts on the fail­ings of this process.

My fa­ther left Trinidad to­wards the end of March 2020. I would like to make it clear that his de­ci­sion to leave had noth­ing to do with want­i­ng to es­cape Trinidad for a safer des­ti­na­tion. He sim­ply want­ed to vis­it his fam­i­ly, his grand­chil­dren in par­tic­u­lar, who re­side in South Flori­da.

It’s been three months since the bor­ders were closed, and he, like many oth­er na­tion­als, wish to re­turn home. Grant­ed, COVID-19 con­tin­ues to be an on­go­ing is­sue. But no coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly a small is­land-na­tion like T&T, can re­main iso­lat­ed from the rest of the world. Even if our econ­o­my can weath­er the short­fall due to the lack of trav­el and the com­merce that comes with it, na­tion­als can­not be left aban­doned in for­eign coun­tries.

My fa­ther is for­tu­nate—he is stay­ing with fam­i­ly and is rel­a­tive­ly com­fort­able. But some Trin­bag­o­ni­ans don’t have any sup­port to re­ly on, and “shel­ter­ing-in-place” is in­cur­ring a sig­nif­i­cant cost to them. It has been re­port­ed in the me­dia that some na­tion­als are run­ning low on funds and are fac­ing des­ti­tu­tion and home­less­ness; how can they shel­ter-in-place if they can’t af­ford shel­ter? Do they have any le­gal re­course to seek re­im­burse­ment and com­pen­sa­tion for men­tal an­guish from the gov­ern­ment? Af­ter all, this pol­i­cy is be­ing forced up­on them through no fault of their own.

Now the gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed in­struc­tions on how to sub­mit a re­quest, and some groups of na­tion­als has been repa­tri­at­ed: UWI stu­dents and those em­ployed on cruise ships. But what hasn’t been made clear, is the cri­te­ria that de­ter­mines who gets the ex­emp­tion and who gets re­fused.

There was the case in­volv­ing Jef­fery Azar (and his wife) and Derek Chin. They both made ap­pli­ca­tions at the same time with arrange­ments to re­turn by the same means. Yet Mr Azar was de­nied while Mr Chin was ap­proved. Why? On what grounds did you make that de­ci­sion? And why is this de­ci­sion un­der your sole purview?

The “fair­ness” of this process is fur­ther brought in­to ques­tion by the fact that Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Bar­ry Padarath were both grant­ed ex­emp­tions. Not for any per­son­al or fam­i­ly emer­gency, but to at­tend par­ty screen­ings as po­ten­tial can­di­dates for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. With all due re­spect, Min­is­ter Young, that’s not an ac­cept­able rea­son.

Po­lit­i­cal needs should not take pref­er­ence over those of av­er­age cit­i­zens. My fa­ther, for ex­am­ple, is re­tired but still has in­ter­ests in Trinidad that pro­vide a source of in­come. The eco­nom­ic ef­fects of the lock­down re­quires him to be there to at­tend to them. And, speak­ing of pol­i­tics—has the gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered that re­fus­ing cit­i­zens the right to re­turn could al­so end up deny­ing them the right/op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­er­cise their fran­chise in the soon-to-be-held gen­er­al elec­tion? Again, is this grounds for a le­gal chal­lenge?

Min­is­ter Young, I will con­cede that your gov­ern­ment took what it felt was the nec­es­sary, al­beit dra­con­ian steps in keep­ing the coun­try safe from the rav­ages of COVID-19.

Fur­ther­more, I am not sug­gest­ing that the cri­sis has passed, nor am I ad­vo­cat­ing that the bor­ders be im­me­di­ate­ly opened to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el. But the gov­ern­ment needs to do more to ad­dress the con­cerns of dis­placed na­tion­als.

Leav­ing them to shel­ter-in-place is es­sen­tial­ly telling them to “fend for them­selves.” You can’t treat this as a num­bers game—to sac­ri­fice a few for the sake of the many. Es­pe­cial­ly since you have al­ready deemed that some cit­i­zens are wor­thy of def­er­en­tial treat­ment.

The gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly tout­ed the de­ci­sion to close the bor­ders as an in­te­gral part of its “suc­cess” in pre­vent­ing an out­break of COVID-19. But with the coun­try’s day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties re­turn­ing to a sense of nor­mal­cy, bring­ing these na­tion­als home should be giv­en top pri­or­i­ty. They have al­ready been sub­ject­ed to lock­downs in the coun­tries where they are strand­ed and have wit­nessed what hap­pens when safe­ty mea­sures like face masks and so­cial dis­tanc­ing are not fol­lowed. I am aware that there is lim­it­ed space in the quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties. But since they know what’s at stake, per­haps they can be trust­ed to self-quar­an­tine in their own homes. This would al­le­vi­ate the gov­ern­ment’s need for main­tain­ing these ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties; one less cost for the state to bear. At the very least, this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-eval­u­ate the process.

My fa­ther, like many na­tion­als who share his predica­ment, sim­ply wants to re­turn home—to re­turn to their lives. This mat­ter de­serves your at­ten­tion and it is my sin­cere hope that my com­ments here will en­cour­age you to do so.

Re­spect­ful­ly,

Ryan Hadeed,

colum­nist and

con­cerned cit­i­zen