Camille McEach­nie

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvin Charles says he will look in­to UK tourists’ claims that were al­most pre­vent­ed from leav­ing on a “mer­cy” flight back to the UK af­ter be­ing deemed a “flight risk.”

The tourists said the sit­u­a­tion oc­curred, three days be­fore their re­turn to the UK and just af­ter the T&T air­ports were closed by Gov­ern­ment on Sun­day, March 22, to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

They al­so claimed they were wrong­ful­ly ac­cused of “ac­cost­ing” the Le Grand Cour­land Spa Re­sort man­ag­er, who threat­ened them with evic­tion.

The tourists al­so claimed the man­ag­er called the “ri­ot po­lice” who ar­rived “weld­ing ma­chine guns.”

Their claims, re­port­ed in the UK news­pa­per —Dai­ly Mail On­line, in­di­cat­ed that the al­ter­ca­tion be­gan when they asked why they were served fried eggs with cakes, in plas­tic plates, and with plas­tic forks.

The ar­ti­cle was wide­ly shared on­line.

Re­spond­ing to the claims, the man­ag­er of the re­sort Nali­ni Gal­barangs­ingh said the ho­tel be­gan to set out mea­sures in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s rec­om­men­da­tion to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

She claimed 26 UK guests were giv­en up to sev­en no­tices of the new plan which in­clud­ed sep­a­rat­ing the ta­bles and lim­it­ing al­co­hol. The new mea­sures were out­lined to the British Em­bassy and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive, she claimed.

The ho­tel man­ag­er called the po­lice af­ter the guests be­gan to show “ag­gres­sive­ness” in the lob­by be­cause they were not al­lowed al­co­hol and to eat in the restau­rant.

She claimed some guests com­plained that, con­trary to the ho­tel’s re­port, oth­er tourists were get­ting al­co­hol and eat­ing in restau­rants in To­ba­go.

She said the ho­tel’s staff felt threat­ened.

She said a po­lice sergeant turned up 20 min­utes lat­er.

“The of­fi­cer was ‘ex­treme­ly po­lite’,” she said.

She added, “ He told them ...if they ( po­lice) had to re­turn for any rea­son ... fur­ther ac­tions would be tak­en, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to, be­ing barred from the last flights de­part­ing for the UK.

Chief Sec­re­tary Charles was asked about the mat­ter on Wednes­day, March 25, at the post -Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing.

He said he was hear­ing about the mat­ter for the first time and had re­quest­ed a re­port from the head of To­ba­go po­lice Di­vi­sion ACP Ver­non Roberts.