PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter over a month of un­cer­tain­ty, 70 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who had been strand­ed in Suri­name since the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders on March 22 re­turned home yes­ter­day.

The group, in­clud­ing 69 na­tion­als and one per­son who has per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy here, ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port via a Suri­name Air­ways flight re­port­ed­ly char­tered for an es­ti­mat­ed US$25,000 at around 10.25 am.

About 15 min­utes af­ter they set foot on Tri­ni soil, their bus con­voy ar­rived at the air­port flanked by po­lice es­corts.

The con­voy met the plane on the tar­mac and pas­sen­gers, guid­ed by of­fi­cials wear­ing pro­tec­tive suits, ush­ered them to the wait­ing bus­es. All the pas­sen­gers on board ap­peared to be wear­ing masks as they left the plane to board the wait­ing trans­port. The dri­vers of the bus­es were al­so in pro­tec­tive suits and masks.

As they left the air­port at around 11.15 am, sev­er­al of the pas­sen­gers aboard the bus­es waved to mem­bers of the me­dia along Pi­ar­co Old Road.

Just about an hour lat­er they ar­rived at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Debe cam­pus, where they will be quar­an­tined for the next 14 days. Their ar­rival was met with a slight hic­cup as the con­voy ini­tial­ly at­tempt­ed to en­ter through the wrong gate, but that mis­un­der­stand­ing was quick­ly rec­ti­fied.

The group lat­er set­tled in at the fa­cil­i­ty in var­i­ous dorm rooms on the cam­pus. Each dorm room was equipped with a re­frig­er­a­tor, a stand­ing fan and toi­letries. The re­turn­ing na­tion­als al­so re­ceived lunch up­on ar­rival at the fa­cil­i­ty.

The re­turn home yes­ter­day end­ed the wait and see saga the na­tion­als, who com­prised main­ly oil and gas work­ers, had to en­dure af­ter they failed to beat the March 22 dead­line to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­fore the bor­ders were closed as a part of mea­sures to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Hav­ing missed the dead­line for the clo­sure of T&T’s bor­der, the na­tion­als were forced to stay put as they al­so end­ed up in lock­down in the South Amer­i­can coun­try, who to date has re­port­ed 10 cas­es of the virus with one death and eight re­cov­er­ies.

Speak­ing about the prepa­ra­tions in place for the group at yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Chief Med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram gave the fa­cil­i­ty the thumb’s up.

“I vis­it­ed my­self yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) to as­sure every­thing was in place. So the coun­try med­ical of­fi­cer is the com­man­der for the Min­istry of Health and she’s on-site to make sure every­thing is in place when they do come in.”

On Mon­day, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young con­firmed that he had giv­en the na­tion­als based in Suri­name the all-clear to re­turn.

They are the sec­ond group of na­tion­als to be al­lowed to re­turn to this coun­try fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the bor­ders to in­ter­na­tion­al flights, fol­low­ing the re­turn of 33 T&T na­tion­als from Bar­ba­dos on April 21.

The na­tion­als who had re­turned from Bar­ba­dos were im­me­di­ate­ly placed in­to quar­an­tine for two weeks at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre.