Gail Alexan­der

Form a unit­ed front and let’s all work to­geth­er for T&T's sake.

That’s the chal­lenge from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the Gov­ern­ment to have all en­ti­ties – unions, pri­vate sec­tor, busi­ness, Op­po­si­tion, NGOs – work to­geth­er against the COVID pan­dem­ic.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who’d made a sim­i­lar call re­cent­ly, re­in­forced it again at last night’s UNC Mon­day fo­rum meet­ing af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ear­li­er in the day called out the Op­po­si­tion on a news­pa­per ed­i­to­r­i­al that called for all to work to­geth­er in T&T's try­ing times against the virus.

In counter ac­tion, she echoed the call right back, say­ing lead­ers were need­ed since COVID was war in it­self. Per­sad- Bisses­sar called on the Prime Min­is­ter to form a unit­ed front with all T&T’s stake­hold­er sec­tor groups.

"Let us unite, let’s work to­geth­er, be our broth­er’s and sis­ter’s keep­er.”

“I call on the gov­ern­ment to work with all stake­hold­ers, this is not about blam­ing or sham­ing. UNC re­mains ready to help to serve in the se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion con­fronting us,”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC con­tin­ues help­ing peo­ple to get sup­port ser­vices. She said peo­ple who want­ed to con­tribute could con­tact UNC's so­cial pages, MPs’ and coun­cil­lors’ of­fices and Per­sad- Bisses­sar said the UNC was seek­ing do­na­tions – whether in kind, phys­i­cal ap­pear­ances or do­na­tion of items - to help those in great­est need.

“Let’s work to­geth­er and do this to­geth­er,” she said.

She not­ed that last year UNC dis­trib­uted thou­sands of masks and ham­pers.

“But we can­not do it alone. I ask for your help. If you can help in any way and we’ll share our plans with you.”

While call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to work with all, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so crit­i­cal of Gov­ern­ment’s vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion ef­fort. She said Gov­ern­ment had been say­ing they couldn’t get vac­cines but oth­er coun­tries with few­er re­sources than T&T were get­ting vac­cines. She not­ed Pe­ru re­cent­ly do­ing so.

She al­so not­ed a fe­male Unit­ed Na­tions of­fice re­cent­ly stat­ed that the roll­out of CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty vac­cines - which the Gov­ern­ment had sought vac­cines from - was go­ing to be fur­ther de­layed.

“Why is T&T so back­ward, are we blight? Is it be­cause of poor man­age­ment and in­com­pe­tence? Is that why you have to cry and say you can’t get vac­cines? So many op­por­tu­ni­ties came your way and you didn’t take them.”

Per­sad- Bisses­sar said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion fac­ing T&T called for fresh, in­no­v­a­tive ideas.

“It can't be busi­ness as usu­al. I call on gov­ern­ment to work with all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion.”

The cur­rent pe­ri­od is tough times for the peo­ple she said, adding that the mot­to must be “We will nev­er give up – we must nev­er give up.”