SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke is threat­en­ing to shut down the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s op­er­a­tions at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, as he says the Gov­ern­ment has failed the of­fi­cers by not pro­vid­ing prop­er per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

Duke’s state­ments come fol­low­ing news that 13 im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus and 84 more are in quar­an­tine.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the PSA head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Duke gave sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of face masks, hand sani­tis­ers and haz­mat suits the of­fi­cers were giv­en over a 51-day pe­ri­od. He said dur­ing this pe­ri­od, 5,000 peo­ple had trav­elled in and out of the coun­try.

“You know how many sur­gi­cal masks they gave them to deal with 5,000 pas­sen­gers be­tween Jan­u­ary 4 and Feb­ru­ary 24? Fifty-one days, you know how much masks they gave them? 250 sur­gi­cal face masks,” Duke said.

He said there are 90 im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers as­signed to work at the air­port but the en­tire group was giv­en 180 bot­tles of hand sani­tis­er, each mea­sur­ing 250 ml and 25 haz­mat suits. He said they were al­so giv­en gloves but all the gloves were the same size, mak­ing them dif­fi­cult for the fe­male of­fi­cers to use.

Duke ac­cused Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young of be­ing a ‘word­smith’ and us­ing ‘big words’ to de­flect from not pro­vid­ing the prop­er PPE for the of­fi­cers.

“We are de­mand­ing all the PPE is pro­vid­ed for all em­ploy­ees, we will not be ac­cept­ing that stock ran out.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment had breached Sec­tion 6 of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Act by not pro­vid­ing a safe work en­vi­ron­ment for the of­fi­cers.

“They have failed in ful­fill­ing their le­gal du­ty to these em­ploy­ees. The PSA will have a ze­ro-tol­er­ance on that for im­mi­gra­tion, for cus­toms at the air­port, and at any mo­ment we will shut it down, flat on its back, no warn­ing, no fur­ther warn­ing,” Duke said.

When asked to ad­dress a post on so­cial me­dia that al­leged im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers were in­fect­ed with the virus while at­tend­ing two par­ties, Duke said those al­le­ga­tions were un­true.

“We ex­pect them to do that, this is PNM style - blame the work­ers. There is no ev­i­dence of that, it is all made up to make the work­ers look ir­re­spon­si­ble. Ask your­self where is the head of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion? Where is she? Out of the coun­try. Ask your­self if any­one re­al­ly cares about those work­ers.”

Min­istry probes source of virus

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty says it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing how a group of Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers re­cent­ly con­tract­ed COVID-19.

“There is pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence that sug­gests that the con­trac­tion of COVID-19 may not have been di­rect­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the of­fi­cial per­for­mance of du­ties by per­son­nel,” a re­lease from the min­istry said.

It said the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, Gary Joseph and Nata­ki At­i­ba-Dilchan, met with act­ing Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Derek Craig­well to dis­cuss cur­rent im­mi­gra­tion-re­lat­ed is­sues af­ter Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ex­pressed con­cern about the re­cent de­vel­op­ments.

“Mat­ters dis­cussed in­clud­ed the con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) to en­sure the health and safe­ty of Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers sta­tioned at the air­port. Mea­sures are al­so in place to main­tain con­tin­u­ous Im­mi­gra­tion ser­vices for both in­com­ing and de­part­ing pas­sen­gers,” the re­lease said.

The re­lease said the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) con­tin­ues to sani­tise all work­spaces at the air­port on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, in ac­cor­dance with the guide­lines from the Min­istry of Health. It added that the min­istry will con­tin­ue to pro­vide all nec­es­sary re­sources to en­sure the well-be­ing of its of­fi­cers.