Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

T&T na­tion­als on board the Roy­al Caribbean’s Vi­sion of the Seas are again con­cerned about whether they will be al­lowed to re­turn home.

Their con­cern comes af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young sug­gest­ed he may ask for them to be quar­an­tined aboard the ship for two weeks off T&T’s coast when they get here be­cause of the size of the group.

Crys­tal Charles, who work in the cruise line’s restau­rant, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that they now fear the com­pa­ny may not ac­cede to the re­quest.

“That is putting pres­sure on the com­pa­ny, be­cause I mean the com­pa­ny is do­ing an amaz­ing job in tak­ing care of us by giv­ing us three meals a day and up­dat­ing us and what not but it is go­ing to keep back the com­pa­ny,” Charles said.

“If they stay two weeks in Trinidad wa­ters that keep­ing back the whole process and the com­pa­ny is try­ing to get up and run­ning by at least Ju­ly.”

At this stage, Charles said their anx­i­ety is spi­ralling out of con­trol.

“One minute we can come, the next we can’t come and next minute they don’t know where to put us and an­oth­er time we hear they are com­mu­ni­cat­ing and we com­ing the first week of June, then we hear we are go­ing to be quar­an­tined on board,” she lament­ed.

Anx­ious to re­turn to home soil, she begged the Gov­ern­ment to con­firm a re­turn date for the 250-plus Tri­nis.

In a no­tice to crew mem­bers, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Roy­al Caribbean ad­vised that its team is work­ing close­ly with the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and ex­pects a date will be fi­nalised by this week.

While Charles group was dis­tressed, the 52 na­tion­als who were aboard the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy cruise ship since March and re­turned home on Mon­day, were cel­e­brat­ing yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing from the UWI Debe Cam­pus fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, Nali­ni Dur­gah said, “The fa­cil­i­ty is amaz­ing and the staff has been re­al­ly help­ful.”

Dur­gah con­firmed the group was test­ed for COVID-19 im­me­di­ate­ly on ar­rival be­fore head­ing to Debe for their manda­to­ry 14-day quar­an­tine. They ex­pect the re­sults in a few days.