As of Thurs­day, 20,173 peo­ple had re­ceived COVID-19 Salary Re­lief Grants from Gov­ern­ment – and an­oth­er 20,000 will re­ceive grants by month-end.

Des­per­ate to re­turn home fol­low­ing the death of his moth­er and the con­di­tion of his sev­en-month preg­nant wife, a T&T na­tion­al in Suri­name has made an ur­gent re­quest to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for an ex­emp­tion for en­try.

Dis­ap­point­ment, frus­tra­tion, and fear are the emo­tions be­ing felt by the 109-mem­ber group of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed in the US.

Flash­ing smiles filled their faces so much that they were im­print­ed in the masks worn by all 29 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who fi­nal­ly touched home soil at the Port of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, af­ter dis­em­bark­ing the Car­ni­val Fan­ta­sy cruise ship.

Dozens of Trinidad and To­ba­go oil­field work­ers in Mex­i­co have is­sued a plea to the gov­ern­ment to al­low them to re­turn home.

The im­ple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic health mea­sures in the on­set of COVID-19 has not on­ly helped con­tain the spread of the virus but sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce oth­er ill­ness­es.

More in­vig­i­la­tors and safe­ty of­fi­cers will be hired over the next month by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the up­com­ing Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tion and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy (CAPE) ex­ams.

As hun­dreds of cit­i­zens re­quest ex­emp­tions to re-en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says Gov­ern­ment may con­sid­er ask­ing peo­ple to pay for their COVID-19 quar­an­tine stays.He made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 up­date in re­sponse to ques­tions on whether T&T could fol­low Ja­maica’s pol­i­cy for its re­turn­ing na­tion­als. Ear­li­er this month, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade Kam­i­na John­son said some na­tion­als would have to pay US$20 per day for the 14 days of their manda­to­ry quar­an­tine.

Shop­pers con­tin­ued to stay away from main shop­ping ar­eas in the South City on Tues­day as the re­open­ing of phase three of the COVID-19 lock­down took ef­fect. 

Peo­ple feel ig­nored. Peo­ple feel pow­er­less. Peo­ple feel help­less. This has been the com­mon re­frain that we at the Crop­per Foun­da­tion heard, two years ago, as we start­ed work on a three-year Ac­tion “CSOs for Good En­vi­ron­men­tal Gov­er­nance.” In this EU-fund­ed Ac­tion, along with our part­ners, we learnt just how alien­at­ed, ex­clud­ed and dis­en­fran­chised our com­mu­ni­ties have felt as they try and ad­vo­cate for a health­i­er and more sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­ment.

Let’s be the Sin­ga­pore of the Caribbean! That’s ba­si­cal­ly the un­der­ly­ing wish of many of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pol­i­cy doc­u­ments. We are very of­ten com­pared to the city-state, es­pe­cial­ly along eco­nom­ic lines. In fact, we fo­cus a lot on eco­nom­ic mea­sures: we are called a “de­vel­op­ing econ­o­my.” With COVID-19, every­one wants to re­open “The Econ­o­my” and some folks are call­ing the Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee an “Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee.” Aren’t there oth­er things that need re­open­ing and fix­ing na­tion­al­ly?

Gov­ern­ment is re­ject­ing Roy­al Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al’s (RCI) re­quest for T&T na­tion­als aboard its Vi­sion of the Seas cruise ship to be­gin quar­an­tine while sail­ing to Trinidad.