JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

With the coun­try's bor­ders closed since March 22nd, there are now thou­sands of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als abroad, many of whom are ready to come home.

How­ev­er, there is a group of lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al work­ers hop­ing that the gov­ern­ment will al­low them to leave.

Every year, for eight months, hun­dreds of the work­ers go to Cana­da to work on farms, as part of an in­ter-gov­ern­ment agree­ment be­tween the North Amer­i­can coun­try and T&T.

But, this year's trip is in jeop­ardy.

They were sup­posed to leave for On­tario on April 1st, but the flight was can­celled be­cause of the bor­der clo­sure.

They are hop­ing though that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young will make an ex­emp­tion.

"I'd like to ask the min­is­ter if he could kind­ly con­sid­er al­low­ing us to leave. First­ly, this is our sole in­come. We have no oth­er source of in­come un­less it's part-time," Sidique Ali Ho­sein said.

"We un­der­stand what the cri­sis is. We un­der­stand the risks in­volved, but we al­so need to pro­vide for our fam­i­lies," he added.

Des­ig­nat­ed as es­sen­tial work­ers in Cana­da, Ali Ho­sein said the gov­ern­ment has giv­en clear­ance for them to en­ter.

He said arrange­ments have al­so been made with the own­er of Schuyler farms, in On­tario, where he will work, to char­ter a flight to pick them up.

Two oth­er col­leagues of his, broth­ers - As­sad and Farzad Mo­hammed, said the like hun­dreds of oth­ers seek­ing to make the trip, they are des­per­ate to go .

They said, in many in­stances, the fam­i­lies of the agri­cul­tur­al work­ers de­pend on the earn­ings they re­ceive in Cana­da.

"It's hun­dreds of fam­i­lies de­pen­dent on this pro­gramme be­cause every week they send mon­ey home," As­sad said.

"Since I start to go to Cana­da, I start to build my house. I start from foun­da­tion. I'm not done yet. I send back mon­ey home to take care of my fam­i­ly," Farzad added.

More than 3,900 miles away, in On­tario, own­er of Schuyler farms, Brett Schuyler, said he's wait­ing pa­tient­ly for Ali Ho­sein and the Mo­hammed broth­ers to ar­rive.

He said the group of­fers spe­cial­ized skills that he needs to max­i­mize the out­put from his farm.

With­out them there, he said, an al­ready chal­leng­ing spring has be­come even more dif­fi­cult.

"If there's a good rea­son for it, that's one thing. But, every­body is in the dark right now. We don't know why, but what we do know is that every oth­er coun­try is fly­ing, and we are go­ing, what's the dif­fer­ence here? What is go­ing on?" he asked.

While the work­ers from T&T are await­ing news from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Schuyler said oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have al­lowed their na­tion­als to leave.

He said re­cent­ly 27 work­ers from Ja­maica came to his farm to work.

Say­ing he's made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to con­tact the T&T gov­ern­ment to make arrange­ments, he said there's been no re­sponse.

"It's just frus­trat­ing be­cause we don't hear any­thing. We don't hear that they aren't go­ing, or yes, that they are go­ing. They just say they are go­ing to talk about it." Schuyler said.

In ad­di­tion to need­ing clear­ance from the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry, Ali Ho­sein said they al­so need the labour min­istry to fi­nal­ize the nec­es­sary pa­per­work.

They said last year they did the nec­es­sary med­ical tests and pro­vid­ed the req­ui­site doc­u­ments to the min­istry.

At­tempts to con­tact Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.