A scold­ing on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion ad­dress­ing the young woman who breached the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions over the week­end was what Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh de­liv­ered in his open­ing re­marks at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Mon­day.

How­ev­er, while the woman’s ac­tions was the ex­am­ple the min­is­ter used, his “buff” was meant for all the young peo­ple who he said are be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble.

“You rep­re­sent a clear and present threat to my liveli­hood, to the liveli­hood of every sin­gle work­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go and I pull no punch­es this morn­ing as I close that you char­ac­terise the worst of young peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Over the week­end, a woman iden­ti­fied by her user­name “sami­ma­mi303”, post­ed a video to so­cial me­dia of her­self and fam­i­ly mem­bers on a beach and in­sist­ed that their pres­ence there was not a threat to any­one else.

She said, “It has come to my at­ten­tion that some of you guys are hav­ing a prob­lem that we’re on the beach but…ahem…it’s our pri­vate beach, our pri­vate land. We’re not risk­ing any­body’s lives be­cause it’s just us fam­i­ly here. We know each oth­er’s where­abouts, we know who we’re around, so not that I need to ex­plain this to any­one but…ahem…I don’t know what to tell you. We’re just for­tu­nate to have this beau­ti­ful place. Go com­plain on Face­book again.”

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh did not hes­i­tate to dis­count her state­ments as il­lu­so­ry as he picked apart her state­ment.

“You are risk­ing your life. You are risk­ing oth­er peo­ple’s lives. You are!” he said.

And on her state­ment that she did not need to pro­vide an ex­pla­na­tion to any­one, Deyals­ingh said: “Let me tell that per­son some­thing. You need to ex­plain to my health­care work­ers be­cause when you get ill, you are com­ing to my hos­pi­tal- and I am us­ing the word my for em­pha­sis.”

He ex­plained that vis­it­ing beach­es are ex­press­ly pro­hib­it­ed in the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and it is ad­her­ence to these very reg­u­la­tions which have pre­vent­ed the coun­try from be­ing in a worse sit­u­a­tion.