Joshua Seemu­n­gal

It was Au­gust 31st, In­de­pen­dence Day, yet there were no flag-wav­ing cit­i­zen, no shout­ing of march­ing or­ders, no drum rolls and no stir­ring ren­di­tions of the Na­tion­al An­them to be heard at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

With the an­nu­al pa­rade can­celled be­cause of the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the on­ly sound to be heard was the faint buzzing of drones in the sky.

Hang­ing from them, and not from the tra­di­tion­al flag­pole, were the red, black and white of the coun­try’s na­tion­al flags as part of an al­ter­na­tive In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion ac­tiv­i­ty con­duct­ed by em­ploy­ees of Rec­trix Drone Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

“To­day, we have of­fered to do this as a mark of re­spect. Al­so, as pa­tri­ots, we’ve come out to put the flag in the air, and fly it for a cou­ple hours, so peo­ple dri­ving by can see the flag, and re­mem­ber what this day is all about,” said An­tho­ny Vieira, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Rec­trix Drone Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

Hav­ing ob­tained the per­mis­sions from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, Vieira and his team went to the Sa­van­nah from 8 am. Oth­ers want­ed to par­take too, Vieira said, but COVID re­stric­tions lim­it­ed the group to five peo­ple.

Proud and de­ter­mined, the group of five bat­tled strong winds and tech­ni­cal chal­lenges to get the flags in­to the sky. Per­haps more than ever, this year cit­i­zens need­ed to demon­strate a sense of pa­tri­o­tism, the team said.

“The na­tion is at a very crit­i­cal junc­ture as it per­tains to COVID-19, we have to beat it or else we are go­ing to go in­to fur­ther lock­down and that is go­ing to spell chaos for every­one. We are not im­mune to this,” Vieira said.

De­spite the new nor­mal, T&T re­mains a blessed na­tion, he added. How­ev­er, he said we on­ly need to look abroad to see how dev­as­tat­ing COVID-19 can be if things get out of hand.

Giv­en this threat, Vieira said it is our civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­here to the pub­lic health guide­lines.

“Please ad­here, com­ply with the re­quests from the gov­ern­ment and Min­istry of Health and from the Prime Min­is­ter. The pub­lic sec­tor, the pri­vate sec­tor, please let us ob­serve the COVID-19 pro­to­cols. And hope­ful­ly, God bless our na­tion,” he said be­fore re­turn­ing to en­sure that the flags flew cor­rect­ly.