Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is ad­vo­cat­ing for a pol­i­cy that al­lows es­sen­tial work­ers to by­pass road­blocks while po­lice con­tin­ue to crack down on peo­ple who breach the State’s COVID-19 mea­sures.
Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, even as the po­lice con­tin­ued road­blocks, that he was in di­a­logue with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to have the pro­pos­al ap­proved.

As the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion steers clear of pri­vate schools’ busi­ness, vice-pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Schools’ As­so­ci­a­tion An­tho­ny Mc­Collin is im­plor­ing school man­agers to show hu­man­i­ty in how they treat chil­dren whose par­ents can­not af­ford to re­sume their class­es.
Sev­er­al par­ents con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia in the past week com­plain­ing that their chil­dren’s schools had is­sued let­ters say­ing class­es will re­sume on­line and if they fail to pay school fees their chil­dren will be ex­pelled.
But in a brief tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny said the op­er­a­tions of pri­vate schools were an arrange­ment be­tween par­ents and the schools’ man­age­ment. 
“We do not get in­volved in that,” Gar­cia said.
While the Ed­u­ca­tion Act gov­erns the over­all ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, it more or less dic­tates the op­er­a­tions of pub­lic schools and Mc­Collin said his mem­bers fol­low this act. But Gar­cia said the Con­cor­dat deals with preser­va­tions of rights for de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.
Gar­cia al­so said they are mon­i­tor­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and are await­ing ad­vice from the Min­istry of Health be­fore mak­ing any de­ci­sion on the re­open­ing of schools.
Mc­Collin, who is the prin­ci­pal of Cor­pus Christi Col­lege, said the as­so­ci­a­tion com­pris­es 16 schools and they are yet to de­cide on the re­sump­tion of class­es as they await fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from the min­istry. He said their stu­dent pop­u­la­tion in­cludes chil­dren the min­istry as­signed to them. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted there are sev­er­al schools which are not part of the as­so­ci­a­tion.
While the as­so­ci­a­tion can­not speak for the schools out­side its mem­ber­ship, Mc­Collin urged school man­agers to sym­pa­thise with stu­dents whose fam­i­ly’s fi­nances were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the shut­down of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty due to the virus.
“In the midst of all of this, I will en­cour­age all ed­u­ca­tors and school man­age­ment boards to em­ploy some hu­man­i­ty in mak­ing de­ci­sions. It is sim­ply be­cause you have an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion and some par­ents might be in dire fi­nan­cial con­straints,” Mc­Collin said.

State-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um has said it plans to sell scrap iron as part of its strat­e­gy to raise cash amidst the crash of oil prices.

This was the warn­ing is­sued by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith on Sat­ur­day, as he urged cit­i­zens to ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions set out in the Pub­lic Or­di­nance Act un­der the Stay-at-Home or­der cur­rent­ly in ef­fect across T&T.

New­ly-ap­point­ed Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Noel Gar­cia says of the 13,265 home­own­ers and renters on the cor­po­ra­tion’s data­base, on­ly 192 have so far ap­plied for a two-month de­fer­ral of pay­ments to­wards their homes dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis.

So, you are stuck at home; can­not go to work, can­not go out with friends, no more evening foot­ball with the boys. The frus­tra­tion lev­el is ris­ing. The past four months have seen dra­mat­ic changes sweep­ing across the globe, re­sult­ing in se­vere re­stric­tions on free­dom of move­ment. It be­gan in the Hubei province in Chi­na where a com­plete ‘lock­down’ was im­posed to try and con­tain the spread of COVID-19. Over the past two months, the pace of ‘lock­downs’ rapid­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed as coun­tries across the globe fol­lowed the ex­am­ple of Chi­na. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and oth­er recre­ation­al sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been af­fect­ed as gyms, pub­lic parks and all oth­er sport and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties have had to close their doors in com­pli­ance with gov­ern­men­tal re­stric­tions. For­tu­nate­ly, for our high-per­for­mance ath­letes, who have had to cur­tail train­ing, the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee fi­nal­ly saw it fit to post­pone the Olympics.

Fol­low­ing is a press re­lease Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Gary Grif­fith is­sued yes­ter­day in re­sponse to what he called an alarm­ing in­crease in ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an traf­fic over the last three days de­spite the Stay-at-Home mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19:

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says cit­i­zens who choose to flaunt the Gov­ern­ment’s Stay-at-Home or­ders and go on­to the na­tion’s road if they are not es­sen­tial work­ers or go­ing on es­sen­tial busi­ness will have to pre­pare them­selves to be caught up in dai­ly road­blocks by po­lice.

The at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing a moth­er and her two chil­dren who are seek­ing to be re­leased from the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal with­drew their habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says al­most 25 per cent of the coun­try’s prison pop­u­la­tion could be grant­ed free­dom due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says the spate of road­blocks across the coun­try yes­ter­day were “a part of polic­ing” and was nec­es­sary to deal with the scourge of crime.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says there will be 12 vir­tu­al courts in op­er­a­tion across the coun­try by next week.