A closed bor­der, cou­pled with no re­spons­es from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young, have pre­vent­ed na­tion­al mid­field­er foot­baller Khaleem Hy­land, who is in Sau­di Ara­bia, de­fend­ers Daneil Cyrus and Ran­dan­far Abu Bakr and four oth­er who are strand­ed in neigh­bour­ing Bar­ba­dos from re­turn­ing home, due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic which is wreak­ing hav­oc in coun­tries through­out the world, the play­ers said yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, some 33 na­tion­als who were based in Bar­ba­dos suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed their re­turn home on Mon­day via a char­tered flight.

on Wednes­day Steve Davis, the agent for Hy­land, 30, who plays pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Sau­di Ara­bia for Al-Faisaly said he could not un­der­stand the re­luc­tance of the T&T gov­ern­ment to help oth­er cit­i­zens back home, af­ter nu­mer­ous at­tempts for the past three weeks.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports Davis said: "All the oth­er over­seas play­ers at the club were tak­en back home by their re­spec­tive coun­tries ex­cept Hy­land, and I don't un­der­stand why. We have reached out to the T&T Em­bassy there in Sau­di Ara­bia and al­so in Eng­land via email and they have re­layed our mes­sage to get Hy­land back home. Khaleem him­self had con­tact­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley three weeks ago and still, there has been no help forth­com­ing."

The gov­ern­ment an­nounced the clo­sure of all T&T bor­ders on March 22, a month ago in an at­tempt to com­bat the spread of COVID-19 which has claimed thou­sands of lives world­wide. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment has been bom­bard­ed by cit­i­zens in dif­fer­ent parts of the globe re­quest­ing to re­turn home.

Foot­ballers though ap­pear to have been se­vere­ly hard-hit by the clo­sure of the bor­ders with Hy­land, a play­er who has been a sta­ple on the TT se­nior foot­ball team as cap­tain and in­spi­ra­tion, lead­ing the list. It is un­der­stood al­so that na­tion­al de­fend­er Daneil Cyrus, who is based in In­dia with Mo­hun Bagan AC in the I League, along with Ran­dan­far Abu Bakr (Churchill Broth­ers in I League), as well as the quar­tet of Shack­iel Hen­ry, Shirlo John­son, Dwight Pope and Gar­net Di­az, all of whom have been ply­ing their trade in the Co­ca Co­la Bar­ba­dos Foot­ball League with Par­adise FC.

Hy­land, a na­tive of Care­nage told Guardian Me­dia Sports: "I emailed Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and I mes­saged the Prime Min­is­ter on his In­sta­gram ac­count three weeks ago, but have not re­ceived a re­sponse from nei­ther. I al­so reached out to the TT Em­bassy in Lon­don and was told to keep abreast with the trav­el arrange­ments and then re­spond."

With Hy­land, who is al­so a Bel­gian cit­i­zen but has his fam­i­ly in T&T, grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed, said he al­so found out that the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment has giv­en a four-day win­dow for non-na­tion­als to re­turn to their re­spec­tive coun­tries at no cost. "The prob­lem though is that our bor­ders are closed so no flights will be go­ing there," Hy­land ex­plained on Wednes­day.

Ef­forts to con­tact Min­is­ter Young proved fu­tile, while Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe said she's will be help­ing the play­ers get home.

Mean­while, the quar­tet in Bar­ba­dos seemed to have giv­en up hope of re­turn­ing home any­time soon. Ac­cord­ing to Hen­ry "If Stu­art Young and the gov­ern­ment want­ed to help us re­turn home, they would have done so a long time ago."

Hen­ry a for­mer W Con­nec­tion and Cen­tral FC play­er who has been the voice of the play­ers in the re­gion­al is­land, said they have reached out to al­most every­one pos­si­ble for help, in­clud­ing Young via email, let­ter and through close mem­bers of his par­ty and the gov­ern­ment, but to no avail.

"We were try­ing to get on to the flight with the 33 peo­ple on Mon­day but no­body con­tact­ed us," Hen­ry not­ed. The TT bor­ders are sched­uled to open in the com­ing weeks, and Hen­ry said he and his col­leagues will be hop­ing to use that op­por­tu­ni­ty to get home.