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Thursday, July 10, 2025

PM confirms TTFA hotel as COVID step-down centre

by

Gailo Alexander
1910 days ago
20200416
 File picture November 2019, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley looks into one of the rooms at the Home of Football in Couva after the opening ceremony.

File picture November 2019, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley looks into one of the rooms at the Home of Football in Couva after the opening ceremony.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Home of Foot­ball fa­cil­i­ty in Cou­va, which was of­fered to Gov­ern­ment to house re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients, is ex­pect­ed to be ready in a cou­ple of weeks.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, who spoke on the de­vel­op­ment at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, said Gov­ern­ment had ac­cept­ed the of­fer, which was made at no cost to the state.

The build­ing was shut down by then new­ly-ap­point­ed TTFA pres­i­dent Williams Wal­lace soon af­ter be­ing com­mis­sioned last No­vem­ber. Wal­lace was quot­ed back then as say­ing there were pend­ing ap­provals and al­so no prop­er­ty in­sur­ance for the mil­lion-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty. Row­ley was among those who’d at­tend­ed the build­ing’s launch pri­or to the clo­sure.

Speak­ing about the is­sue of stan­dards of care of­fered to peo­ple re­quired to be quar­an­tined yes­ter­day, Row­ley added, “In T&T, our de­fault po­si­tion is to take the line that some­thing’s bad. You don’t nor­mal­ly say it’s good.”

He said Gov­ern­ment was do­ing well in pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for peo­ple who need this.

“We’re look­ing for ac­com­mo­da­tion of good stan­dard. I know not all will agree the ac­com­mo­da­tion is up to every­body’s tastes, as some may have dif­fer­ent tastes.”

In the event such (quar­an­tine) rooms are re­quired, he said the Home of Foot­ball was be­ing of­fered. Gov­ern­ment and FI­FA had an arrange­ment for this lo­ca­tion where­by Gov­ern­ment was ap­proached by the world foot­ball body for pub­lic land for the struc­ture and FI­FA made fund­ing avail­able for its con­struc­tion.

De­scrib­ing the struc­ture as ex­cel­lent, Row­ley said it can hold up to 72 peo­ple.

“This is as good as any ac­com­mo­da­tion as you can get in T&T,” he said.

Row­ley said a few things still have to be done to the build­ing in or­der for it to house pa­tients. How­ev­er, he said the pri­vate sec­tor has come for­ward to do the out­fit­ting to make it com­fort­able and sup­ply ap­pli­ances et cetera.

“I’m hap­py peo­ple are chip­ping in this way,” he added.

Mean­while, on the is­sue of more T&T na­tion­als want­i­ng to come home, Row­ley said there were many out­side, hope­ful­ly shel­ter­ing in place. But he re­it­er­at­ed that if T&T’s doors weren’t closed at this time, the best-laid plans against the virus could come un­done.

“I un­der­stand the pain of sep­a­ra­tion, of not be­ing home. When I spent my first year on cam­pus (over­seas), for Christ­mas, I made sure my door was locked and I cried the whole day,” the PM said.

“I know the feel­ing of watch­ing TV and see­ing coffins in New York be­ing cov­ered tem­porar­i­ly to cope with the death rate. I know my daugh­ter is (in New York ) and I feel that every morn­ing and night. I’ve been to a fu­ner­al to see my favourite broth­er buried – so when peo­ple seek­ing of­fice say Gov­ern­ment doesn’t care I take that as par for the course for those who on the wrong course.”

Row­ley al­so hit crit­ics who’ve said Gov­ern­ment was “hid­ing” in­for­ma­tion on the cri­sis. He said it was the same peo­ple who claimed peo­ple had drowned in the 2018 Green­vale flood­ing and made oth­er wrong ac­cu­sa­tions. He said the same peo­ple were al­so pass­ing a slur on hard­work­ing health work­ers – whom he thanked – when those peo­ple said in­for­ma­tion Gov­ern­ment was giv­ing on the is­sue was un­true.

COVID-19


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