Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is will­ing to grant an ex­emp­tion to a group of T&T na­tion­als, who were left strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos af­ter this coun­try closed its bor­ders due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Speak­ing at a Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Young said that they were free to re­turn to Trinidad but had to arrange their own trans­porta­tion. 

Young said: “They can make their way here but the Gov­ern­ment is not send­ing a plane for them.” 

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Young took the time to give a chrono­log­i­cal ac­count of the group’s plight and his dis­cus­sions with Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties and the group’s at­tor­neys St Au­gus­tine MP Prakash Ra­mad­har and Lar­ry Lar­ry over their pos­si­ble repa­tri­a­tions. 

Young ex­plained that the group land­ed in Bar­ba­dos af­ter the trav­el ban for na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als took ef­fect on March 23. 

Young not­ed that while the T&T Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Health, sent COVID-19 test kits for the group, of­fi­cials in Bar­ba­dos still re­quired that they serve 14 days manda­to­ry quar­an­tine be­fore be­ing test­ed. 

Young said that af­ter the pe­ri­od elapsed, he was in­formed that the test­ing could still take place but was be­ing de­layed by the fact that Bar­ba­dos has a short­age of test­ing swabs, which are not in­clud­ed in the test kits. 

Young said that af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram and oth­er State med­ical ex­perts, last Fri­day, the de­ci­sion was tak­en to al­low the na­tion­als, who were asymp­to­matic through­out their quar­an­tine, to be test­ed im­me­di­ate­ly up­on their re­turn. 

He ex­plained that once the sam­ples are tak­en, Paras­ram and his team will then de­cide whether they should serve the ad­di­tion­al manda­to­ry quar­an­tine, un­der this coun­try’s Quar­an­tine Act, at their homes or at one of the State med­ical in­sti­tu­tions be­ing used for the pan­dem­ic. 

Through­out the press con­fer­ence, Young re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that nei­ther he nor any of his Gov­ern­ment col­leagues were en­gaged in a “back-room deal” with the group’s lawyers. 

“We have al­ways done every­thing above board and it can stand up to the high­est lev­els of scruti­ny,” Young said. 

He al­so firm­ly de­nied that his de­ci­sion on their ex­emp­tion was based on racial con­sid­er­a­tions as al­leged by one mem­ber of the group in an in­ter­view with a dai­ly news­pa­per, last week.

While Young claimed that he had no is­sues with the con­tents of the said re­port, he took is­sue with the at­tached head­line, which he claimed could mis­in­form and mis­guide the pop­u­la­tion on the is­sue. 

“I would nev­er con­done any cen­sor­ship of the me­dia but the key and crit­i­cal word is: re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,”  Young said. 

Young, him­self an at­tor­ney, al­so took aim at lawyers, who sought to rep­re­sent such groups. 

Al­though Young ac­knowl­edged that they (the lawyers) had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to seek their clients’ in­ter­ests and pro­tect their rights, he called for some un­der­stand­ing based on the glob­al cri­sis caused by the rapid spread of the virus. 

“We are all in this to­geth­er. We can not break ranks. We must all do what is right,” Young said.  

He al­so not­ed that he was in dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials in Suri­name to help fa­cil­i­tate med­ical tests on a group of na­tion­als left strand­ed in that coun­try. 

Ques­tioned over whether ex­emp­tions would be con­sid­ered for oth­er cit­i­zens, Young said yes, but not­ed that they would be con­sid­ered on a case by case ba­sis.

How­ev­er, he main­tained that the best op­tion was to tem­porar­i­ly stay put. 

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Young re­vealed that he had re­ceived re­ports that psy­chic Yase­nia Gon­za­les and her fam­i­ly were im­prop­er­ly im­per­son­at­ing lo­cal diplo­mats to so­lic­it in­for­ma­tion from na­tion­als stuck in Venezuela. 

While he stat­ed that he re­port­ed the sit­u­a­tion to Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, he could not say whether a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been launched. 

“It is il­le­gal any­where in the world to be com­mit­ting acts of fraud and pass­ing your­self off es­pe­cial­ly as in some­thing im­por­tant as this,” Young said.