Gail Alexan­der

Own­ers of prop­er­ties at One Wood­brook Place in Port-of-Spain have been told that to pro­tect res­i­dents and pa­trons there, they should not al­low their prop­er­ties to be used for quar­an­tine pur­pos­es.

The ad­vice came in a memo from the apart­ment com­plex’s Com­mu­ni­ty Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed (CML), af­ter ten peo­ple were barred from be­ing quar­an­tined at apart­ments there on Thurs­day.

The memo said a pur­port­ed ten­ant of an own­er ad­vised a CML of­fi­cer of the im­mi­nent ar­rival of ten peo­ple to the com­plex for quar­an­tine at four apart­ments.

It was re­port­ed that the var­i­ous own­ers of the apart­ments had ap­proved the use but CML’s at­tempt to con­tact the own­ers to con­firm this was un­suc­cess­ful.

The memo said that the CML had asked the pur­port­ed ten­ant to ad­vise on the COVID-19 sta­tus of the ten per­sons and to con­firm whether they were cur­rent One Wood­brook Place res­i­dents or own­ers. But it was stat­ed that the per­son was un­will­ing to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion or de­tails. The CML de­cid­ed to bar en­try, as the health and well­be­ing of res­i­dents and pa­trons could be put at sig­nif­i­cant risk.

The memo stat­ed that while own­ers are al­lowed to lease their apart­ments for com­mer­cial gain, it was im­plied that this was for nor­mal res­i­den­tial use and not use as a mass quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.

“The health and care of ex­ist­ing res­i­dents are our para­mount ob­jec­tive in these times and CML will not per­mit any ac­tion that puts the ex­ist­ing res­i­den­tial pop­u­la­tion or the pa­trons of the com­mer­cial busi­ness at risk. CML’s po­si­tion is that own­ers won’t be al­lowed to en­gage in com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties such as quar­an­ti­ning at One Wood­brook Place.”

CML ap­pealed to all re­spon­si­ble own­ers to re­frain from en­ter­ing any form of lease agree­ment which al­lowed units to be utilised as a quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.

Sev­er­al own­ers agreed with CML’s ac­tion. Oth­ers felt pri­vate res­i­den­tial com­plex­es couldn’t be used for quar­an­tine due to the num­bers of peo­ple on a com­pound.

One Wood­brook Place of­fi­cials re­ferred queries to an of­fi­cial at Home Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed who did not re­spond to calls for com­ment.