The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has is­sued state­ment in­di­cat­ing that it is in the process of try­ing to help na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go back home from their cur­rent over­seas lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing cruise ships.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease is­sued this morn­ing, the Min­istry says bring­ing cit­i­zens back home is con­tin­gent on the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to man­age quar­an­tine num­bers, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that it has re­ceived thou­sands of ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­emp­tions from na­tion­als lo­cat­ed in every cor­ner of the globe.

The Min­istry says as such, a sched­ule for their re­turn is be­ing or­gan­ised.

The full text of the Min­istry’s state­ment, fol­lows…

STATE­MENT BY MIN­ISTRY OF NA­TION­AL SE­CU­RI­TY ON ‘NA­TION­ALS ON CRUISE SHIPS’

It is com­ing to our at­ten­tion that there may be na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go in dif­fer­ent num­bers, on var­i­ous cruise ships, in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, through­out the Caribbean and else­where.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the of­fi­cial re­quest for ex­emp­tions for en­try by our na­tion­als on cruise ships, had been pro­vid­ed to the Gov­ern­ment by agents of the cruise ship com­pa­nies, as a col­lec­tive, with the to­tal re­quest ex­ceed­ing 430 na­tion­als. We have not been pro­vid­ed with break­downs per cruise ship and the par­tic­u­lars of where these var­i­ous cruise ships are lo­cat­ed.

We have been mak­ing at­tempts to lo­cate, for ex­am­ple, six na­tion­als on one cruise ship said to be near­by. This task has been chal­leng­ing as we do not have in­di­vid­ual ap­pli­ca­tions from these six but rather, we have a blan­ket ap­pli­ca­tion for 430.

The Gov­ern­ment has been man­ag­ing the pub­lic health care sys­tem and bal­anc­ing the en­try of na­tion­als based, in great mea­sure, on the ca­pac­i­ty of our pub­lic health care sys­tem to han­dle COVID 19 cas­es with­out be­ing over­whelmed.

Ex­emp­tions for the en­try of na­tion­als in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go have been grant­ed con­sis­tent with en­sur­ing that we can man­age the num­bers be­ing quar­an­tined by the state to en­sure the con­tin­ued pro­tec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

We are go­ing to per­mit the en­try of our na­tion­als on these var­i­ous cruise ships by es­tab­lish­ing a sched­ule which al­lows us to man­age their re­turn, con­sis­tent with our re­sources, to pro­tect them, and the pop­u­la­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Min­is­ter of Health, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and oth­ers are dis­cussing how the en­try of our na­tion­als on the cruise ships can be sched­uled.

We are al­so man­ag­ing the re­turn of close to 275 stu­dents whom the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing on bring­ing back to Trinidad and To­ba­go from Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica.

These na­tion­als are on­ly two cat­e­gories of per­sons who have ap­plied for ex­emp­tion to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have thou­sands of ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­emp­tions by na­tion­als who are all over the globe.

The Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue man­ag­ing the re­turn of all of our many na­tion­als who are scat­tered across the globe. We un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties each na­tion­al who wants to re­turn is fac­ing.

Our man­age­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go based on ex­pert med­ical pub­lic health ad­vice and sci­ence, has tak­en us this far and we will con­tin­ue to care­ful­ly man­age our mea­sures to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.