Sascha Wil­son

The state has been hit with 16 law­suits re­lat­ed to COVID-19 since the bor­ders were closed in March in an ef­fort to curb the spread of the virus. This was re­vealed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi when asked whether the de­ci­sion to re­vert to a 10 pm clos­ing time for bars had any­thing to with the law­suit filed by more than 300 bar own­ers and op­er­a­tions and the Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT).

In an in­ter­view at the Me­dine Street Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment dur­ing his walk­a­bout in the San Fer­nan­do West con­stituen­cy, Al-Rawi not­ed that the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions were re­vis­it­ed every two weeks. He said the de­ci­sion was tak­en be­cause of the med­ical ev­i­dence and more par­tic­u­lar­ly the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice con­firmed that they were able to su­per­vise bars and the “oth­er Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions im­pact fo­cus points in an ef­fec­tive way”.

“I be­lieve we are up to 16 law­suits now from Anand Ram­lo­gan and Ger­ald Ramdeen where they do­ing every­thing from try­ing to re­peal and strike out the reg­u­la­tions so that they can open the bor­ders, im­por­tant­ly, so that they can set free COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients and so that they can ba­si­cal­ly col­lapse Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Anand Ramlogan

Con­demn­ing the ac­tions of the UNC, he said the par­ty’s at­tor­neys have lost all the mat­ters heard this far in the court.

“They are doomed to fail but I think it an at­tack on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to want to strike out the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and to de­mand that the bor­ders be open. That is rep­re­hen­si­ble and that is the op­po­site course tak­ing us away from be­ing num­ber one in the world to prob­a­bly be­ing a dis­as­ter zone.”

Asked about the laws re­gard­ing the use of mu­sic trucks dur­ing cam­paigns, he said his fo­cus is on his cam­paign and the en­force­ment of the laws is for the Po­lice Ser­vice.

BOATT, which is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ram­lo­gan, was grant­ed leave by Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams last Thurs­day to file for ju­di­cial re­view chal­leng­ing the then 8 pm clos­ing time.

The mat­ter will be heard to­day.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced the clos­ing time for bars had been ex­tend­ed from 8 pm to 10 pm.

Gerald Ramdeen

How­ev­er, he again ap­pealed to pa­trons and bar op­er­a­tors to ex­er­cise re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ob­serve the COVID-19 pro­to­cols and guide­lines.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­cent­ly told a me­dia con­fer­ence that around 10,000 na­tion­als have sought ex­emp­tions to come home and that even his daugh­ter in New York want­ed to re­turn, but wasn’t al­lowed or en­cour­aged to do so.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that ex­emp­tions could in­crease ac­cord­ing to what sort of su­per­vised quar­an­tine peo­ple agree to have.

“There’s no de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy to tram­ple on any­one’s rights. We’re try­ing to pro­tect every­one’s life, es­pe­cial­ly those with­in T&T’s bor­der,” he said.

The prime min­is­ter had added that ex­emp­tions for re­turns would be al­lowed on a man­aged ba­sis so hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty wouldn’t be af­fect­ed by large num­bers en­ter­ing.

Of the 330,000 na­tion­als over­seas, he said 275,000 live in the US. But there is a cat­e­go­ry of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 who were “out­side” when bor­ders closed and may need ex­emp­tions.

The ma­jor­i­ty is from the US.

Gov­ern­ment has so far grant­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,600 ex­emp­tions.