Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC, has once again called on the Gov­ern­ment to ramp up COVID-19 test­ing in this coun­try.

The re­newed call comes as T&T record­ed its first COVID-19 death, as well as Gov­ern­ment’s move to shut-down all non-es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties for 14-days, from mid­night on Sun­day.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued this af­ter­noon, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was hap­py Gov­ern­ment had in­ten­si­fied the re­stric­tion of move­ment in the coun­try. She al­so re­it­er­at­ed the need for more COVID-19 test­ing to be con­duct­ed on the pop­u­la­tion.

The full text of the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s state­ment, fol­lows…

STATE­MENT OF OP­PO­SI­TION LEADER THE HO­N­OURABLE KAM­LA PER­SAD-BISSES­SAR, SC, ON PNM GOV­ERN­MENT’S COVID-19 NA­TION­AL SHUT­DOWN

A day af­ter I in­formed this coun­try that we had record­ed the first of­fi­cial death of the Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, I am pleased that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has heed­ed my call for a 14-day shut­down of the non-es­sen­tial ser­vices of this coun­try, which he an­nounced at to­day’s post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence.

He in fact had no choice but to take my ad­vice for once at this stage, be­cause his Gov­ern­ment’s will­ful and dan­ger­ous mis­man­age­ment of this un­prece­dent­ed and de­struc­tive Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has in fact wors­ened the eco­nom­ic, so­cial and es­pe­cial­ly the health cri­sis in our coun­try.

This is a di­rect con­se­quence of the on­go­ing ef­forts by the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue hid­ing the true sta­tis­tics of Covid-19 in­fec­tions among the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This de­lib­er­ate and reck­less en­dan­ger­ment of the lives of every sin­gle cit­i­zen in this coun­try must be round­ly con­demned by every right-think­ing in­di­vid­ual.

I now al­so call on the PNM Gov­ern­ment, and specif­i­cal­ly the Health Min­is­ter, to come clean as to why have they on­ly done 400 Covid-19 tests in the past month, de­spite the UNC call­ing for test­ing, since it is proven that ear­ly de­tec­tion pre­vents the spread of Coro­n­avirus.

The Health Min­is­ter and his Cab­i­net col­leagues must al­so ex­plain why they chose to sup­press the very cru­cial in­for­ma­tion of the first of­fi­cial Covid-19 death at their news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, de­spite their false promise to be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able to the pub­lic on every is­sue con­cern­ing the Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in our coun­try.

I fur­ther call on the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that they ad­e­quate­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly, prop­er­ly and com­pe­tent­ly in­form all cit­i­zens as to the ex­act and pre­cise de­tails of this “shut­down ini­tia­tive”, since fail­ure to in­form them of these new mea­sures can lead to them un­wit­ting­ly vi­o­lat­ing the law.

I al­so call on the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease po­lice pa­trols in all ar­eas, to en­sure the safe­ty of cit­i­zens’ pri­vate prop­er­ties and busi­ness­es dur­ing this lock­down pe­ri­od.

The fact that the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment has fi­nal­ly tak­en my sug­ges­tion is proof that they re­main at a com­plete loss as to how to ef­fec­tive­ly com­bat the de­struc­tive Coro­n­avirus cri­sis in our coun­try.

From the out­set, the PNM Min­is­ters were un­pre­pared and un­will­ing to deal with it, hav­ing bla­tant­ly re­fused the UNC’s ef­forts in Par­lia­ment on THREE oc­ca­sions since Jan­u­ary 2020 to have the mat­ter dis­cussed as one of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance.

In ad­di­tion, their own Min­is­ters and Prime Min­is­ter con­sci­en­tious­ly ig­nored the nu­mer­ous trav­el re­stric­tions and warn­ings, and chose to en­gage in ex­pen­sive and ques­tion­able for­eign trav­el dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the un­con­trol­lable glob­al spread of Covid-19. Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley fur­ther re­fused to self-quar­an­tine for the manda­to­ry 14-day pe­ri­od up­on re­turn­ing to Trinidad.

The Op­po­si­tion UNC rep­re­sents over half of the 1.3 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go as MPs of 18 con­stituen­cies and con­trol of sev­en Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions. We there­fore have a le­gal right to en­sure that our coun­try’s re­sources are used to pro­tect all our cit­i­zens in a time of such un­prece­dent­ed cri­sis.

Yet, de­spite our best ef­forts to do so, the PNM Gov­ern­ment blunt­ly re­fused every sin­gle of­fer by the UNC to as­sist and ef­fec­tive­ly work to­geth­er to bat­tle this fright­en­ing cri­sis in the in­ter­est of the pop­u­la­tion’s health and safe­ty.

I sin­cere­ly hope that this de­struc­tive be­hav­iour on the part of the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment can now be stopped, giv­en that we have reached such a crit­i­cal stage of the Coro­n­avirus cri­sis.

I urge all cit­i­zens to please heed every sin­gle pre­cau­tion and leg­isla­tive mea­sure im­ple­ment­ed thus far by the State, to avoid con­tract­ing Covid-19, and to pre­vent its spread. Please stay at home, re­spect the quar­an­tine and new re­stric­tions on your move­ment and safe­guard your health and that of your fam­i­lies at all costs.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, MP
Leader of the Op­po­si­tion