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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Elderly dad falls sick in US, seeks urgent exemption

by

1773 days ago
20200910

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Her voice broke a lit­tle as she spoke. Sec­onds lat­er, Point Fortin grand­moth­er Sum­intra Ba­jan was sob­bing at the idea of turn­ing 65 years old this month and not hav­ing her full fam­i­ly around to cel­e­brate.

Along with her hus­band Al­bert Ram­per­sad, she is strand­ed in the Unit­ed States (US) for five months.

While there is emo­tion­al tur­moil in Ba­jan’s mind, it is even worse for her hus­band Al­bert Ram­per­sad, who de­vel­oped prostate prob­lems and needs uro­log­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion.

“We need to re­turn home now. My hus­band needs to see a urol­o­gist,” Ba­jan told Guardian Me­dia from Hous­ton, Texas.

To ac­cess prop­er and af­ford­able health­care in the USA, one needs health in­sur­ance. In the ab­sence of that, Ba­jan said their med­ical bills at Her­man Memo­r­i­al Med­ical Cen­tre is pil­ing, and they have not set­tled one debt to date.

“It is like liv­ing in hell. In the day, we pray for night to come, and when night comes, you can­not sleep. You are just hop­ing to hear some­thing over the phone about get­ting to re­turn home. The in­for­ma­tion we are get­ting, it al­ways seems false. They have us liv­ing in hope, and it is killing us.”

Ba­jan and Ram­per­sad left Trinidad on Feb­ru­ary 14 to help their daugh­ter and grand­child set­tle in their new life in Hous­ton. They were sup­posed to de­part on May 30 to re­turn home, but with the bor­ders closed, there was noth­ing they could do. 

On March 21, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the gov­ern­ment would lock down the bor­ders on March 24.

But with just over two months of their stay re­main­ing, Ba­jan was not wor­ried. Even as May ap­proached, the cou­ple was un­fazed as the T&T COVID-19 ef­fort seemed suc­cess­ful.

“We thought it would have been short­er than this ex­ten­sive pe­ri­od that we are hav­ing now. We knew about the clo­sure of the bor­ders, but we al­ways thought things would work out be­cause we heard how the rates were low. We thought they had it un­der con­trol, so we did not wor­ry about it. 

“When May 30 reached, flights were leav­ing the US, and our bor­ders were closed, so there was no way of get­ting back home. We ap­plied for ex­emp­tions on June 13 and again in Ju­ly, but we nev­er got any re­ply. We got noth­ing at all. My daugh­ter called the Min­istry but got noth­ing from them. Up to to­day, we do not know what is go­ing on.” 

Both are di­a­bet­ic and hy­per­ten­sive, and on May 29, Ram­per­sad fell ill and had to go to the med­ical cen­tre. Doc­tors at­tend­ed to him and gave him med­ica­tion, but the bills are ex­pen­sive. His pain sub­sided un­til Au­gust 31, when he again had to seek med­ical care.

“Up to this morn­ing, we took him to the hos­pi­tal again. They told him to go home and drink plen­ty of liq­uids, but he is not pass­ing urine prop­er­ly. He needs to re­turn home to see a urol­o­gist.” 

Even Ba­jan had to vis­it the doc­tor for her con­di­tion in Ju­ly. While her daugh­ter works, Ba­jan said she has a lot of bills and a child.

On Ju­ly 30, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said 50 per cent of the cit­i­zens who got ex­emp­tions re­turned home al­ready. On Au­gust 29, Row­ley an­nounced that he would meet with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to work out plans to in­crease the rate of repa­tri­a­tion of cit­i­zens. He said notwith­stand­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the pan­dem­ic, it was on­ly rea­son­able that cit­i­zens are al­lowed home. 

While Ba­jan heard of Row­ley’s state­ments, she is los­ing hope.

“On Sep­tem­ber 21, I will be 65 years, and I wish to be in Trinidad to spend my birth­day with my chil­dren,” Ba­jan said.


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