RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

An an­nounce­ment will be made as soon as next week about the new pro­posed site for the mass cold-stor­age unit for Covid-19 vic­tims, Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Home Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T, Kei­th Bel­grove, told Guardian Me­dia to­day.

On 27th De­cem­ber 2021, the As­so­ci­a­tion an­nounced its de­ci­sion to with­draw from the ini­tial site at Beau­car­ro in Freeport, af­ter res­i­dents spoke out against it ex­press­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns.

Af­ter lis­ten­ing to Beau­car­ro's res­i­dents, Bel­grove in­di­cat­ed that they were work­ing on iden­ti­fy­ing new ar­eas to es­tab­lish new fa­cil­i­ties.

"They're work­ing on it and I'm as­sum­ing that by mid next week we can make a pub­lic an­nounce­ment," Bel­grove said on Fri­day.

When asked if there were con­sul­ta­tions with res­i­dents and oth­er stake­hold­ers on the new pro­posed site, to avoid a re­peat of what tran­spired at Beau­car­ro where res­i­dents al­leged that they weren't con­sult­ed, Bel­grove replied: "Well, we will make the an­nounce­ment at that time."

On 18th De­cem­ber 2021, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram first dis­closed that the Min­istry of Health want­ed to set up a large stor­age fa­cil­i­ty for COVID-19 fa­tal­i­ties, as morgues were said to be run­ning out of space.

Paras­ram said the min­istry had part­nered with fu­ner­al homes through a Mem­o­ran­dum Of Un­der­stand­ing to es­tab­lish such a site.