Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day that some­one im­per­son­at­ing the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO), sent in­for­ma­tion to the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) chang­ing Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on host­ing the T20 tour­na­ment this year.

Ad­dress­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley re­vealed that the in­for­ma­tion pur­port­ing to come from the CMO was suf­fi­cient­ly im­por­tant for the CPL to re­spond to Gov­ern­ment on the “new terms” giv­en by the cul­prit.

He said the sit­u­a­tion caused Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe to speak to the CPL and con­firm that Gov­ern­ment’s plans to host the tour­na­ment had not changed.

The Gov­ern­ment has been un­der fire by Op­po­si­tion and so­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tors, who claim that the de­ci­sion to al­low 250 peo­ple in­to the coun­try for the tour­na­ment, is a slap in the face to thou­sands of na­tion­als who have ap­plied for ex­emp­tions to do the same.

The tour­na­ment will be played from Au­gust 18 to Sep­tem­ber 10, en­tire­ly in T&T but with­out fans.

Guardian Me­dia’s tele­vi­sion sta­tion, CNC3, has the rights to broad­cast the tour­na­ment.

Dr Row­ley said there are peo­ple in T&T who are “pre­pared to un­der­mine the na­tion­al ef­fort for T&T to fail so they may suc­ceed.”

He said the is­sue of host­ing the tour­na­ment was for T&T’s liveli­hood since tax­pay­ers have been pay­ing sev­er­al mil­lions of dol­lars a month to keep the 1,000 work­ers at Hy­att, Hilton and Mag­da­lene Grand in jobs.

The play­ers will stay at the Hilton at the ex­pense of the CPL.

He said T&T is now in a suf­fi­cient­ly healthy state to host the tour­na­ment and is the on­ly coun­try that can do that.

He added that T&T was as­sessed as num­ber one in han­dling the virus threat and re­sults showed it can han­dle the T-20.

“So it has noth­ing to do with bring­ing in CPL play­ers and leav­ing out cit­i­zens.”