The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing on the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion to be more com­pas­sion­ate in its han­dling of the COVID-19 cri­sis, and to ease up the hard­ship which cit­i­zens are en­dur­ing.

“We again call on the Gov­ern­ment to show more com­pas­sion to our strand­ed na­tion­als abroad, as well as in­creased sup­port for busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens that con­tin­ue to suf­fer,” the po­lit­i­cal par­ty says in an of­fi­cial state­ment, which com­ments on the Prime Min­is­ters press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day 24 Oc­to­ber 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to the UNC, what the Gov­ern­ment thinks of its re­sponse to COVID-19 is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from “the re­al­i­ty of what the pop­u­la­tion is fac­ing on the ground”.

“He boast­ed about a par­al­lel health sys­tem while cit­i­zens were left to bat­tle un­der a tent at Mt Hope. If you were to vis­it any of our ma­jor hos­pi­tals, you will see the true state of our health­care sys­tem that has been over­whelmed for months,” the UNC says in its re­lease.

The UNC state­ment al­so notes:

“Cit­i­zens have had to wait weeks for their COVID test re­sults, and some cit­i­zens, un­for­tu­nate­ly, lost their lives wait­ing for these test re­sults be­fore they could have ac­cessed any rel­e­vant med­ical treat­ment.”

The re­lease adds: “We again heard noth­ing of the promised rapid test kits, and his on­ly so­lu­tion was to re­open a few busi­ness­es.”

The op­po­si­tion par­ty main­tains that the econ­o­my was al­ready in free-fall be­fore the ad­vent of COVID-19 in March this year, and rub­bish­es the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­sis­tence on blam­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic for the ills cur­rent­ly plagu­ing the coun­try by stat­ing: “PNM crashed every­thing long be­fore COVID”.

The UNC al­so slams Gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to de­liv­er time­ly re­lief to cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es, alike.

“His ‘apol­o­gy’ for the suf­fer­ing cit­i­zens have en­dured ac­com­pa­nied by the ab­sence of gov­ern­ment sup­port is syn­ony­mous with his regime's con­tin­ued lip ser­vice to every­one through­out this pan­dem­ic,” the UNC says, ar­gu­ing that the PM failed to of­fer “any new so­lu­tions or sup­port for the thou­sands of busi­ness­es that are in dis­tress.”

The UNC is al­so scathing in its crit­i­cism of how Gov­ern­ment had han­dled the sit­u­a­tion of T&T na­tion­als strand­ed abroad.

“[The] on­ly plan for the thou­sands of na­tion­als strand­ed abroad is to cre­ate yet an­oth­er Min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee to now ‘re­move the ex­emp­tion sys­tem’,” the op­po­si­tion stat­ed.