Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter the surge of COVID-19 clus­ter cas­es, law en­force­ment must act to en­sure that peo­ple—in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties—com­ply with the COVID re­stric­tions now. And south­ern­ers are flout­ing the COVID re­stric­tions the most, says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing on the in­creased num­ber of COVID cas­es, now to­talling 169, Row­ley said the Pub­lic Health or­di­nance re­quires law en­force­ment to en­sure things are done prop­er­ly. If peo­ple con­gre­gate in larg­er num­bers, in­clud­ing par­ties, then law en­force­ment must act “…not as pun­ish­ment but as preser­va­tion to pro­tect the pub­lic.”

Row­ley said the same ap­plied to bars and restau­rants.

“They’re open and we ex­pect­ed se­ri­ous law en­force­ment around then and I’m to won­der why, giv­en the lev­el of lack of co-op­er­a­tion some peo­ple demon­strat­ed, I’m not see­ing the odd per­son dragged be­fore the court and pay­ing fines. I’m do­ing my job as Prime Min­is­ter and I ex­pect­ed oth­ers will do their jobs al­so,” he said.

“If peo­ple feel this is a joke they must be made to un­der­stand it’s not a joke and no dare and dou­ble-dare, it’s not machis­mo—it’s com­mon sense.”

He said the state will en­sure there is more ac­tive law en­force­ment on the sit­u­a­tion to en­force the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance and peo­ple were ex­pect­ed to obey and be sen­si­ble.

“If not you’ll fall afoul (of the law) and we ex­pect the law will be en­forced against you,’’ he said.

Row­ley lament­ed that South­ern­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly aren’t tak­ing the COVID mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly. He said the im­pres­sion is that it’s a prob­lem in an­oth­er part of T&T and it’s an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal side’s is­sue.

“That will get T&T in se­ri­ous trou­ble, this virus doesn’t re­spect peo­ple, race, creed, colour, class or politi­cian—they need to get on board,” he said.

He lament­ed peo­ple who said there’s no COVID in T&T and Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to op­press peo­ple.

Row­ley al­so ap­pealed for co-op­er­a­tion on con­tact trac­ing, which he said is to pro­tect “the life of you and yours—the in­for­ma­tion shared has to do with life and death. No group is ex­empt from this virus.”

Row­ley clar­i­fied fig­ures on the num­ber of na­tion­als who re­ceived ex­emp­tions to leave and en­ter T&T. He said 5,580 got per­mis­sion to leave and 5,539 had ap­plied to en­ter as at Ju­ly 29. He said en­try ex­emp­tions were grant­ed to 2,250 and 3,389 are await­ing, adding Gov­ern­ment was man­ag­ing this and “bring­ing them in by the hun­dreds.”

On re­turn­ing na­tion­als, he said first pref­er­ence was for those who live in T&T and were ill or had small chil­dren. So far, he said T&T has al­lowed in 538 peo­ple from the US and 417 from cruise ships.