An­na-Lisa Paul

As cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to ig­nore pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions not to con­gre­gate, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials say they have been left with no choice but to use the law to com­pel peo­ple to ad­here to the reg­u­la­tions.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said while they are still us­ing moral sua­sion as the first means of reach­ing peo­ple, re­cent be­hav­iours had ne­ces­si­tat­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of stricter means as ap­peals were falling on deaf ears in some quar­ters.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Min­istry of Health’s head­quar­ters, Queen’s Park East, Port-of-Spain, Deyals­ingh said, “I will re­ly for the time be­ing on moral sua­sion.”

How­ev­er, he warned, “We are go­ing to work with the po­lice hand-in-hand be­cause un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance, Pub­lic Health In­spec­tors and I have just had that con­ver­sa­tion with the CMO...Pub­lic Health In­spec­tors can go in­to any gath­er­ing whether it is pub­lic or pri­vate and if they feel there is an im­mi­nent dan­ger, they can ask for that crowd to be dis­persed.”

He said he met with the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram and the min­istry’s le­gal de­part­ment yes­ter­day to dis­cuss putting a task force in place.

“The Pub­lic Health In­spec­tors work­ing with the po­lice to go on­to pri­vate prop­er­ties...un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is what it has come to...un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance which speaks to an im­mi­nent threat and if we feel there is an im­mi­nent threat, we can take ac­tion and we will take ac­tion be­cause ap­par­ent­ly that is the on­ly thing some peo­ple will re­spond to.”

Deyals­ingh said he has al­so spo­ken to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on how ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion can be used to dis­perse peo­ple in pri­vate set­tings.

Al­though he claimed to have read in the me­dia that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials had been in at­ten­dance at a wed­ding in Val­sayn on the week­end which boast­ed sev­er­al hun­dred guests, Deyals­ingh de­nied know­ing this for sure.

He, how­ev­er, con­firmed the wed­ding host had ap­proached him for ad­vice be­fore host­ing the event.

Deyals­ingh went on the record as he claimed, “I ad­vised that per­son not to do what he did be­cause he came to me for ad­vice. I know the per­son. I ad­vised him not to do it and right now, there is a wed­ding be­ing planned by an­oth­er res­i­dent in Val­sayn. I will say it, he is plan­ning a wed­ding for De­cem­ber 12 for 300 peo­ple. Peo­ple just don’t get it.”

Cau­tion­ing that it would on­ly take one per­son to spread the COVID-19 virus and risk in­fect­ing hun­dreds due to in­con­sid­er­ate ac­tions, Deyals­ingh al­so re­ferred to Sun­day’s ‘zess­er’ par­ty in Ca­roni as he said, “Right now, I have hos­pi­tal space for them.”

He joked, “So the guests from the wed­ding and the peo­ple in the zess­er par­ty could make friends on the ward. We will make sure they ex­change names and phone num­bers and be­come bo­som bud­dies on the ward, but if they find them­selves in the ICU, then they can’t talk and be­come friends...but they could be­come friends in Cou­va, Cau­ra or Pointe-a-Pierre. I will make sure they be­come friends.”

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged peo­ple not to play Russ­ian Roulette with their lives.

“I must say I am amazed that some peo­ple in our na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion could be so cav­a­lier and ir­re­spon­si­ble and self­ish that af­ter Jan­u­ary to No­vem­ber, and be­ing told of how dan­ger­ous this thing is and why we need to be go­ing through what we are go­ing through to evade its worst fangs, all these peo­ple want to do is to par­ty.”

He re­it­er­at­ed, “We are not im­mune to what is hap­pen­ing to oth­er peo­ple around the world. This virus is no re­specter of gen­der, of race, of class, or eco­nom­ic stand­ing. Do not play Russ­ian Roulette with it be­cause if a group of peo­ple, whether 200 or 100 in a wed­ding in Val­sayn or wher­ev­er else...if you all do that and you in­fect a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple in this coun­try and those in­fect­ed peo­ple math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mul­ti­ply and over a short space of time, we get a large num­ber of sick peo­ple in this coun­try...there is one out­come to that and so far, we have avoid­ed that out­come.”