SASCHA WIL­SON

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah says it is not nec­es­sary to post­pone Car­ni­val be­cause of the Wuhan coro­n­avirus which is con­tin­u­ing to spread glob­al­ly.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Deyals­ingh an­nounced last week that Car­ni­val will con­tin­ue as planned un­less there is an oc­cur­rence of “some­thing re­al­ly dra­mat­ic.” Gov­ern­ment has re­strict­ed the en­try of pas­sen­gers from Chi­na for a pe­ri­od of 14 days and is screen­ing pas­sen­gers as they ar­rive at the coun­try’s air­port.

Com­ment­ing on these de­vel­op­ments at a press con­fer­ence at MSJ’s San Fer­nan­do head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah said: “At this point in time I don’t see a ne­ces­si­ty for a ban be­cause as far as we are aware there is no case of the coro­n­avirus in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore if there is no case of the coro­n­avirus here there is no need to have a ban.”

He said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a ban will on­ly arise if the coro­n­avirus en­ters T&T.

“So that if some­body is found in Trinidad and To­ba­go to have the coro­n­avirus then the gov­ern­ment will have to re­think the is­sue be­cause the spread of it can be very rapid, par­tic­u­lar­ly with large events and so on, so that is re­al­ly where the chal­lenge aris­es,” he said.

How­ev­er, the MSJ leader said he hopes the in­fec­tious dis­ease does not en­ter this coun­try be­cause the gov­ern­ment is “ter­ri­bly in­ept” at im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies and de­ci­sions.

“There­fore their im­ple­men­ta­tion at at­tempt­ing to keep the virus out may very well be not suc­cess­ful giv­en how they have failed in the past to get things right. We hope as cit­i­zens that that virus does not en­ter T&T and we al­so hope that it is con­tained glob­al­ly,” Ab­du­lah said.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that close to 40 peo­ple have died from the H1N1 In­fluen­za virus.

“We cer­tain­ly hope more ag­gres­sive steps are tak­en to en­sure that flu virus does not re­sult in more loss of life,” he said.

Ab­du­lah blamed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the state of the econ­o­my and the loss of thou­sands of jobs.

“Both those lead­ers have failed to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. They have failed to trans­form the econ­o­my, they have failed to trans­form the re­la­tions of eco­nom­ic pow­er so that in the last ten years the gap be­tween the rich and the poor has got­ten wider and wider. We have a few peo­ple who are hu­mon­gous­ly rich and we have very many peo­ple who don’t have any mon­ey to­day to be able to send their chil­dren to school to­mor­row,” he said.