SASCHA WIL­SON

While T&T stu­dents who were study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cave Hill cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos are re­lieved to be back home, they are un­hap­py with Caribbean Air­lines US$488 fee per tick­et to re­turn.

Some stu­dents yes­ter­day called the fee un­just, say­ing some of them had less than 24 hours no­tice of the cost and were left in a fren­zy try­ing to source the mon­ey from their rel­a­tives and friends to se­cure a seat on the repa­ra­tion flight.

The stu­dents were among a group from Cave Hill who ar­rived in the coun­try around 2.40 pm yes­ter­day and were sub­se­quent­ly quar­an­tined at the UWI’s St Au­gus­tine cam­pus for the manda­to­ry 14-days in keep­ing with the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 pro­to­col. Four pro­fes­sion­akl ftooballers who were strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos due to the pan­dem­ic al­so re­turned on the flight with the stu­dents.

At yes­ter­day’s press brief­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh said they were ex­pect­ing about 85 stu­dents from Bar­ba­dos. On Sat­ur­day 140 stu­dents from UWI’s Mona Cam­pus were al­so quar­an­tined at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus af­ter they ar­rived here from Ja­maica.

Giv­en the fi­nan­cial woes ex­pe­ri­enced by stu­dents, the Gov­ern­ment on April 27 wired a US$300 to stu­dents study­ing at Cave Hill and Mona who were not on schol­ar­ships.

Speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the stu­dents took is­sue with the price of the tick­ets and the lim­it­ed no­tice they were giv­en to pay the mon­ey.

“For the en­tire week last week, we tried con­tact­ing the air­line con­cern­ing the cost of the tick­et but they did not give us a straight an­swer. On June 12 at 7.10 pm, I re­ceived an email from the air­line stat­ing that the cost of the tick­et is $487.52 and I had a 14-hour pe­ri­od to pay it be­cause I had to pay the mon­ey by 2 pm on Sat­ur­day,” one stu­dent said.

“I was not an­tic­i­pat­ing to pay that much. The most I was pre­pared to pay was US$300 for a tick­et. I re­al­ly be­lieve the air­line should at least have giv­en us a heads-up that the tick­et was go­ing to be so cost­ly.”

The stu­dent said they felt as though CAL took ad­van­tage of them be­cause of their sit­u­a­tion.

“They re­alise that we are des­per­ate to come home and cor­ner us to pay that al­most US$500. I find that was un­just,” the stu­dent said of her par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.

“My moth­er is a do­mes­tic work­er where she can­not come up with that mon­ey in such a short time, banks were closed. There was no way I could get that mon­ey by 2 pm on Sat­ur­day.”

She said she gath­ered the mon­ey on Sat­ur­day with the help of some­one but when she called the air­line she was told they had re­moved her from the list be­cause she did not make the dead­line. For­tu­nate­ly, she was able to get back on the flight list.

“Cor­ner­ing us at the last minute to force us to pay this, it just feels un­just and un­fair,” she com­plained.

She said they were on a group chat with oth­er stu­dents who ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cerns. An­oth­er stu­dent said she on­ly re­ceived an email about her flight de­tails, in­clud­ing the cost of the tick­et, around 4 pm on Sat­ur­day but was aware of the cost from oth­er stu­dents who got their in­for­ma­tion on Fri­day night.

“My mom kept call­ing CAL con­tin­u­ous­ly and would be put on hold for a very long time. Sat­ur­day when she got through af­ter 45 min­utes to an hour, she was put on hold for a while, then the per­son she spoke to told her they did not know the price of the tick­et,” the stu­dent said.

Ini­tial­ly, she said, her moth­er was not will­ing to pay for the tick­et at that cost.

“It is a re­al­ly dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tion. So long we study­ing, we fin­ish our ex­ams and we just want to come home. It was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to make that pay­ment be­cause the im­pres­sion we got is even if we had to pay, a lot of us were not ex­pect­ing to pay such an ex­or­bi­tant fig­ure.”

Thank­ful for the Gov­ern­ment’s care pack­age, she said that mon­ey was used to help with her rent, which was US$400. She said she was able to get by with food ham­pers she got from var­i­ous bod­ies but oth­er stu­dents had it more dif­fi­cult than she did.

Crit­i­cis­ing CAL’s lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, she said, “All week­end we were run­ning in cir­cles with CAL.”

She said there were al­so mix-ups with stu­dents re­ceiv­ing each oth­er’s flight reser­va­tions. “That price, though, was a way to ex­ploit the stu­dents, it is ridicu­lous and they know that our back against a wall.”

At the end of it all, how­ev­er, she said she and oth­er stu­dents were just hap­py to be home and she was hop­ing to make the best of her time in quar­an­tine.

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said all the arrange­ments would have been han­dled by CAL. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter not­ed, “Over 100 stu­dents were repa­tri­at­ed from Ja­maica on Sat­ur­day with­out com­plaint.”

CAL yes­ter­day is­sued a re­lease on the mat­ter but re­called it lat­er on. It did not send an­oth­er re­lease be­fore press time.