Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Oropouche East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to help T&T trav­ellers who can’t vis­it cer­tain coun­tries due to COVID bans and due to their vac­ci­na­tion.

He said Bangladesh has banned T&T trav­ellers and oth­er coun­tries aren’t ac­cept­ing cer­tain vac­cines which T&T na­tion­als have re­ceived and is call­ing for re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy to en­sure na­tion­als can vis­it such coun­tries with­out prob­lems.

He was speak­ing at last night’s UNC Fo­rum.

Guyana has im­posed a vac­cine man­date on trav­ellers from T&T and Cana­da, the Eu­ro­pean Union and oth­er places aren’t ac­cept­ing peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed with the Sinopharm vac­cine used en masse in T&T.

He not­ed it would be dif­fi­cult for T&T trav­ellers to en­ter such places.

Not­ing T&T’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems, in­clud­ing in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment, Mooni­lal added, “This is the on­ly coun­try where things so bad even Venezue­lans flee­ing.”

Mooni­lal who said T&T has the low­est vac­ci­na­tion rate re­gion­al­ly, called on Gov­ern­ment to “start ear­ly o’clock” to source the next set of vac­ci­na­tions for third boost­er shots which will be need­ed by the pub­lic.

UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John said based on the con­tin­u­ing num­ber of COVID deaths - 1,043 yes­ter­day - the lock­down isn’t work­ing.

On oth­er po­lit­i­cal mat­ters, Mooni­lal called for a probe in­to re­ports about Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and for­mer Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) chair­man Dr Lennox Sealey. The UNC’s Bar­ry Padarath called on Gon­za­les to say if he met Sealey on Ju­ly 6 and if Sealey re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in en­sur­ing the find­ings of a re­port com­mis­sioned by WASA be changed and if that was the re­al rea­son Sealey re­signed.

Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of a “don’t care a damn” at­ti­tude, Padarath claimed 10 chil­dren had died due to lack of life-sav­ing ser­vices from the Chil­dren Life Fund (CLF).

“Over 70 chil­dren from 2016 to now have been de­nied CLF ser­vices but there’s mon­ey for Pra­dos and oth­er things. Right now there are sev­er­al chil­dren await­ing life-sav­ing surgery from CLF.’’

Padarath called on Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to give the num­ber of chil­dren who died due to lack of CLF ser­vice since March 2020 when the pan­dem­ic start­ed.