The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is mov­ing to bring home cit­i­zens from Grena­da, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, in­clud­ing Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, close to 79 peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to re­turn from Grena­da this week.

And with oth­er ex­emp­tions hav­ing been grant­ed to peo­ple in some of the larg­er coun­tries, Young is ex­pect­ing lo­cal quar­an­tine fig­ures will in­crease to as much as 200 up­on their re­turn with­in the next few weeks.

Speak­ing dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s na­tion­al health brief­ing, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed that 99 peo­ple re­mained quar­an­tined at var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties cur­rent­ly.

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns sur­round­ing stu­dents in the US, Young sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing dai­ly with that coun­try and no un­to­ward ac­tions would be tak­en against the stu­dents. He ex­plained that stu­dents would be asked to leave the coun­try on­ly if 100 per cent of their class­es are now on­line.

Con­firm­ing the min­istry had re­cent­ly seen an in­crease in the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions from peo­ple abroad to re­turn to T&T, Young spec­u­lat­ed it could be as a re­sult of na­tion­als who had been liv­ing and work­ing afield and had most like­ly lost their jobs and now need­ed to re­turn home.

He re­vealed that of the 4,000 ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived by the min­istry thus far, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 ap­pli­ca­tions had been re­ceived from peo­ple in the US.

The min­is­ter said while they con­tin­ued to re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions dai­ly, pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to those who had ap­plied at the ear­li­est and based on a case-by-case ba­sis, a de­ci­sion would be made.

To those want­i­ng to leave T&T, he said per­mis­sion was be­ing grant­ed.

He ad­vised those seek­ing ex­emp­tions to email their forms to trav­elex­emp­tion@mns.gov.tt, while those want­i­ng to leave could for­ward their re­quest to de­par­tex­emp­tion@mns.gov.tt.

Warn­ing peo­ple of­fer­ing bribes to min­istry staffers to en­sure their re­quests are ap­proved, Young said this was not the way the min­istry worked and he ad­vised that any­one found en­gag­ing in this prac­tice would be re­port­ed to the TTPS.

He al­so cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied claims by the Op­po­si­tion that ex­emp­tion re­quests were on­ly be­ing grant­ed to mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), and de­scribed this as po­lit­i­cal mis­chief.

Mean­while, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has urged peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this po­lit­i­cal sea­son, to con­tin­ue ad­her­ing to pub­lic health guide­lines to wear face masks and so­cial dis­tance even dur­ing walk-about and cot­tage meet­ings.