Gary Ma­habir, the founder of the “T&T Cit­i­zens Over­seas” What­sApp group, is a Trinida­di­an who has been liv­ing in New Jer­sey, USA, for more than 30 years.

He has been or­gan­is­ing food and ne­ces­si­ties to Trinida­di­ans strand­ed in the US and as­sist­ing na­tion­als scat­tered around the world to re­turn home.

Sat­ur­day marked 300 days since na­tion­al have been strand­ed in coun­tries abroad as the Gov­ern­ment closed T&T’s bor­ders to con­tain the spread of COVID-19.

As of De­cem­ber 23, 2020, 17,211 peo­ple made ex­emp­tion re­quests to en­ter T&T. Of that fig­ure, there were 9,557 ex­emp­tions grant­ed, leav­ing more than 7,654 peo­ple, res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents, still out­side, as T&T's bor­ders re­main closed.

With their al­lot­ted trav­el­ling mon­ey ex­haust­ed, as they can­not legal­ly work in the di­as­po­ra, many are still await­ing their ex­emp­tion cas­es to be processed at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. As the days in­crease, their de­spair, de­pres­sion, and anx­i­ety grow.

To lit­er­al­ly sur­vive to get food to eat and a roof over their head, sev­er­al peo­ple have re­sort­ed to re­ceiv­ing hand­outs, food from soup kitchens and lodg­ing at shel­ters meant for the home­less, and the grim sit­u­a­tion has forced some in­to pros­ti­tu­tion.

Ma­habir said the sit­u­a­tion had be­come so des­per­ate for some Trinida­di­ans, that sev­er­al women were sell­ing them­selves to get ac­com­mo­da­tion in var­i­ous coun­tries which was re­port­ed on some sites and was con­firmed by a Trinida­di­an in South Asia.

He said na­tion­als faced many chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties as they ex­haust­ed their lim­it­ed trav­el­ling mon­ey and wore out their wel­come by fam­i­ly and friends.

Ma­habir said he re­ceived com­plaints of a fam­i­ly mem­ber want­i­ng to call US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE) for their rel­a­tive, and one per­son in Cana­da was forced to stay by a friend or neigh­bour be­cause her own son had put her out.

He de­scribed as "ma­g­a­guy­ism" the T&T Over­seas Mis­sions fi­nan­cial dis­burse­ments to na­tion­als as they were not reach­ing the af­fect­ed peo­ple. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Keth Row­ley had man­dat­ed the fi­nance min­is­ter to make fund­ing avail­able to cit­i­zens strand­ed abroad. In Oc­to­ber, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne said US$205,958.99 was dis­trib­uted to 298 strand­ed na­tion­als through five over­seas mis­sions be­tween Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber. The over­seas TT mis­sions used to dis­trib­ute the mon­ey were the Con­sulate Gen­er­al in New York, the Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton, DC High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don, the Con­sulate Gen­er­al in Toron­to and the Con­sulate Gen­er­al in Mi­a­mi.

Ma­habir said as more peo­ple reached out to him for as­sis­tance in the What­sApp group and on the New Jer­sey-based com­mu­ni­ty ra­dio sta­tion WZYE-LP 95.9, he has been able to help out more than 300 peo­ple to date.

He said even when they are repa­tri­at­ed, their or­deal does not end. A strange man was re­port­ed walk­ing the hall­ways of Cana­da Hall, at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in the sec­tion where fe­male na­tion­als were quar­an­tined and there were se­cu­ri­ty is­sues with the hall's bath­rooms hav­ing no locks. The Min­istry of Health was in­formed and con­duct­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ma­habir said the Gov­ern­ment can­not tell its cit­i­zens to hold on or wait with no re­sources, some are now home­less and can't be lo­cat­ed.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­pand its fund­ing for the Min­istry of Health to cre­ate more quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties and to fast track na­tion­als' reen­try to the coun­try and the COVID-19 test­ing in time for them to board in­com­ing flights.

To high­light the plight of hun­dreds of Trin­ba­go na­tion­als still strand­ed abroad Win­ston Ra­goo, the Cry for Jus­tice team along with friends, sup­port­ers and fam­i­ly mem­bers of those locked out of the coun­try held a peace­ful protest at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Fri­day.

Peo­ple speak out

*Althea Lam­bkin, from Va­len­cia, said "My mom Is­abel­la Lam­bkin and my­self have been strand­ed in New York, USA, since March. My mom is 80 years old.

"We have ap­plied for an ex­emp­tion since Ju­ly 1 and we got our ex­emp­tion let­ter last week. I called. It has been a jour­ney for my mom and I."

*David Lewis, not his re­al name from Cas­cade and strand­ed in the UK since March 24, 2020 said "I have since ex­haust­ed all means of liv­ing, I can­not pro­vide or meet my needs for every­day liv­ing, sleep­ing rough on many oc­ca­sions, and re­ceived help from home­less char­i­ties.

"I stayed with a friend who said they could not ex­tend any fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance or refuge any fur­ther be­cause I had be­come a great strain on them.

"The sit­u­a­tion is very dire, I need fi­nan­cial help to as­sist my liv­ing needs and to re­turn home to Trinidad where I can pro­vide for my­self

*Sarah Dou­glas, not her re­al name, from South, a moth­er of two, a cruise ship work­er said "Be­cause of the COVID-19 out­break, the cruise ship in­dus­try start­ed to slow­ly come to a halt and be­gan to send work­ers home in March, 2020.

"Dur­ing this time the com­pa­ny was fa­cil­i­tat­ing get­ting us on a flight to re­turn home, and I was strand­ed on board a ship for eight months in SE Asia.

"I sent in my ini­tial ex­emp­tion re­quest in June, and kept re­send­ing it as I didn't get any re­sponse from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. For­tu­nate­ly, the cruise ship com­pa­ny of­fered us free food, ac­com­mo­da­tion, and med­ical as­sis­tance."

"The Trinida­di­an group of ten were the last to be repa­tri­at­ed, the com­pa­ny trans­ferred us to an­oth­er ship in Eng­lish wa­ters, one step clos­er to get­ting a flight back home to Trinidad."

Dou­glas said their hopes were dashed when they learned that both the UK and T&T bor­ders were closed, and the T&T Gov­ern­ment in­sist­ed they had to go through the bu­reau­crat­ic ex­emp­tion ap­pli­ca­tion pro­ce­dure.

She said at this point some of the peo­ple she worked with on the ship (not Trinida­di­ans) com­mit­ted sui­cide, not know­ing if they were laid off, if they were be­ing sent home with­out pay, some peo­ple be­came frus­trat­ed and could not hold it to­geth­er.

She said in No­vem­ber 2020 they were sent to Bar­ba­dos and even­tu­al­ly reached Trinidad on De­cem­ber 2, they were quar­an­tined for sev­en days at the Re­gent Star Ho­tel, Pi­ar­co and sev­en days at home.

Dou­glas said many peo­ple who were strand­ed didn't know where their next meal was com­ing from, she was for­tu­nate that the cruise ship com­pa­ny took care of her.

She called on the min­istry to stream­line their ex­emp­tion process, and to re­ply to ap­pli­cants in­stead of send­ing an au­to­mat­ed re­sponse to re­as­sure Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and let them know how long it would take to repa­tri­ate them.