Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is main­tain­ing T&T will not open its bor­ders to al­low na­tion­als strand­ed out­side to re­turn home, say­ing they could ex­pose the en­tire coun­try to a big­ger threat of ex­po­sure to COVID-19.

His com­ments came hours af­ter the Op­po­si­tion threat­ened to take the Gov­ern­ment to court to get a “Flight of Mer­cy” for 33 of 35 na­tion­als now strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos af­ter trav­el­ling there from the UK.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley said the clo­sure of the bor­ders last Sun­day was in­sti­tut­ed to sep­a­rate our­selves from the rest of the world and the virus, ad­mit­ting such a move re­sult­ed in con­se­quences main­ly with our na­tion­als out­side.

“The con­se­quences are not pleas­ant. They are the best arrange­ment for sav­ing lives. If that is not enough to some peo­ple, then just leave us alone and we will fight this fight alone if we have to,” Row­ley said.

“All the plan­ning we have done is to cater for who is in here. We can’t plan for who is out there.”

The PM said T&T has 330,000 na­tion­als abroad and in this sit­u­a­tion, they have to be tak­en in­to ac­count in the equa­tion. Of the 330,000, Row­ley said 245,000 are in the US, with 165,000 re­sid­ing in New York alone, while an­oth­er 80,000 are in Cana­da.

He said if we were to open the bor­ders, we might as well thrown in the tow­el.

“We are not go­ing to do that. If it is that cir­cum­stances be­come so dire out there it is quite like­ly that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of those per­sons will head for home,” he said.

Row­ley said sub­se­quent to the shut­ting down of our bor­ders, a group of T&T na­tion­als em­barked on a flight that took them on­ly to Bar­ba­dos.

“When they got to Bar­ba­dos the au­thor­i­ties in Bar­ba­dos had the op­tion to send them back to where they came from,” he said.

In com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the Bar­ba­di­an gov­ern­ment, the PM said they made an arrange­ment so that the na­tion­als would be sub­ject­ed to the Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties.

The na­tion­als were put in quar­an­tine in com­pli­ance with World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) stan­dards.

“No­body is strand­ed and left in the streets,” he said, adding calls were made to ir­re­spon­si­ble politi­cians who start­ed to de­mand that all the plans Gov­ern­ment had put in place should be dis­re­gard­ed.

Row­ley said once the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od is up, the na­tion­als will be test­ed in Bar­ba­dos and “when they reach the WHO stan­dards to be re­leased ... if they make their way to T&T they will ar­rive here” and they will be sub­ject­ed to the CMO.

In the face of mount­ing stress deal­ing with COVID-19, Row­ley said Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar went to the Bar­ba­di­an gov­ern­ment be­hind Gov­ern­ment’s back and made state­ments that “this coun­try has made its cit­i­zens state­less.” This, he said, was un­true.

“Such com­ments are not help­ful. They are detri­men­tal and un­der­min­ing our best ef­forts at home and abroad.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ac­tions, Row­ley said, were ir­re­spon­si­ble in a pe­ri­od of cri­sis as she sought “to score po­lit­i­cal points.”

The PM said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos was about broth­er and sis­ter­ly love.

“It is em­bar­rass­ing to al­ways have to talk about this kind of be­hav­iour,” he said.