Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty says Trinidad and To­ba­go bor­ders will be closed to all, in­clud­ing na­tion­als of this coun­try, from mid­night Sun­day.

“The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a de­ci­sion and I am an­nounc­ing it now, that as of mid­night to­mor­row night (Sun­day, March 22) we will be clos­ing off our bor­ders,” Young said at a press con­fer­ence an­nounc­ing con­tin­u­ing mea­sures to com­bat the spread of the nov­el COro­n­avirus (COVID-19) yes­ter­day.

“As of mid­night Sun­day March 22, we will no longer be al­low­ing in­ter­na­tion­al flights in­to T&T. We will be clos­ing our bor­der, we will, of course, con­tin­ue to al­low, un­der the re­stric­tions that we have cur­rent­ly, car­go ves­sels to come to T&T.”

Young said phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, food and sup­plies will con­tin­ue to en­ter the coun­try but the crews bring­ing in those sup­plies will not be al­lowed to come off the planes and ves­sels. Peo­ple, how­ev­er, will not be al­lowed in.

“We have our pro­to­cols in place, it is work­ing very well where we are not al­low­ing crews to dis­em­bark. Gov­ern­ment took a de­ci­sion and those de­ci­sions are in the fur­ther­ance of the pro­tec­tion of T&T,” he said.

He called on cit­i­zens to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing the virus does not spread, in­clud­ing ad­her­ing to the Gov­ern­ment’s call for no con­gre­gat­ing and for bars, restau­rants and casi­nos to re­main closed to the pub­lic and for the con­tin­ued ob­ser­vance of the sus­pen­sion of all in-house din­ing.

“We recog­nise the dif­fi­cul­ties that peo­ple are go­ing to face per­son­al­ly, but the pub­lic in­ter­est in a bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise is about pro­tec­tion of life,” he said.

Young said the T&T na­tion­als who were strand­ed in coun­tries which had shut down their bor­ders, in­clud­ing cas­es he had be­come aware of in Venezuela and Guyana, could not be helped at this stage since those coun­tries had al­so tak­en the de­ci­sions to shut down their air­ports to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had no doubt this was the best mea­sure at this time to pre­vent the virus from spread­ing across the coun­try and urged all cit­i­zens to fol­low the pro­to­col.

“The on­ly way we will stop the spread of this virus is by lack of con­tact and so­cial per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sive ac­tion to say that we will shut bars,” he said.

“We un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty that this caus­es busi­ness­es, we are very mind­ful of that, that came up in our dis­cus­sions at the de­lib­er­a­tions but it is not busi­ness as usu­al, un­for­tu­nate­ly, around the globe. So we have to take these hard de­ci­sions to pro­tect the peo­ple on Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the own­ers of these es­tab­lish­ments.”

Young spent much of his talk­ing time slam­ming the Op­po­si­tion for be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble for ques­tion­ing why bars need­ed to be closed. Al­though he did not call any names, he seemed to re­fer to Oropouche East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who on Fri­day sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment al­low bars to con­tin­ue sell­ing to cus­tomers to col­lect and take away al­co­hol the way gro­ceries op­er­ate.