Bring the Mighty Spar­row back home and open a Venezue­lan vil­lage for Venezue­lans to sell their art, food and wares in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

These were among the rec­om­men­da­tions from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2021 Bud­get.

Deyals­ingh raised the is­sue of Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co while speak­ing about artistes in TT grap­pling with COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed hav­ing out­door dri­ve-in con­certs at places like Price Plaza where peo­ple could view per­for­mances from their cars. He said food places could de­liv­er to pa­trons in the cars.

Deyals­ingh said he ob­served that the Mighty Spar­row had wist­ful­ly said re­cent­ly he want­ed to come home from the USA.

“Send plane and bring him home – the Birdie’s wings are clipped, ” he ap­pealed.

But Deyals­ingh, who not­ed that cit­i­zens are “hard­ened”, added more laws may be need­ed on the COVID sit­u­a­tion as TT con­tin­ues open­ing up. He cit­ed set­backs oth­er coun­tries have suf­fered do­ing so.

On Venezue­lans, Deyals­ingh said land could be used for a place where they can sell their art­work, pot­tery and food, “Let there be a Span­ish Vil­lage, I’d go just to eat the food.”

He sug­gest­ed Venezue­lans pay NIS and con­tribute more to TT as they use na­tion­al ser­vices.

Not­ing the young Venezue­lan boy who need­ed leukaemia treat­ment, he said the Unit­ed Na­tions’ right of the child could be ob­served to fa­cil­i­tate this.

Deyals­ingh, sup­port­ing the ex­pan­sion of the re­tire­ment age to 65 said, it was age dis­crim­i­na­tion to tell a per­son who reached 60 they could no longer work if they could.

“We can’t just put peo­ple out to pas­ture, our Prime Min­is­ter, at 71 is very fit, many peo­ple can man­age (over age 60). Old­er peo­ple should be em­pow­ered and be kept on even with sys­tems to al­low young ones to come up .”

He not­ed judges’ re­tire­ment age was in­creased and his own fa­ther served at 75 on the bench.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor on the top­ic of run­away crime and in­creas­ing home in­va­sions ad­vo­cat­ed for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Death Penal­ty law for all on Death Row.

Sup­port­ing the re­cruit­ment of over­seas help in the Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) mat­ter, he called for the US Drug En­force­ment Agency to set up a base in this coun­try.

Deyals­ingh said late Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph had good plans- with the blimp and Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels - but suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments halt­ed that. He said good plans shouldn’t be stopped when new gov­ern­ments en­ter.

Mean­while, Deyals­ingh said he was, hurt, an­gry and sad at the death of late Par­lia­ment clerk Sher­anne Samuel and that the health sys­tem had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to the point where a young per­son like Samuel had to die the way she did. Deyals­ingh said health sec­tor is­sues which ex­ist­ed when he was an in­tern still do.

Lament­ing the lack of the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pro­posed Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre, Deyals­ingh said both the PNM and UNC failed TT on this.

He said it’s un­ac­cept­able for good plans to fall by the way­side with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Deyals­ingh who wore a pink rib­bon in mem­o­ry of a can­cer pa­tient, said re­pairs to places like Pres­i­dent’s House and oth­ers mean lit­tle to can­cer pa­tients who need­ed treat­ment.

But he said he has hope since he no­ticed the Prime Min­is­ter’s wife Sharon Row­ley had tak­en up can­cer as a cause.

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to have rur­al com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes for women on this.

He rec­om­mend­ed that places with green spaces be al­lowed a dis­count on prop­er­ty tax and that Gov­ern­ment aim to have one per­son in a house­hold work­ing.

Deyals­ingh said the state of the home­less is still ter­ri­ble and they can al­so eas­i­ly spread COVID-19.

Deyals­ingh called for a fo­rum where peo­ple could re­port nepo­tism. He al­so said with the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Port Au­thor­i­ty, the coun­try had moved back to cap­i­tal­ism.