Sascha Wil­son

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sists that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is man­ag­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which is now threat­en­ing to over­run the par­al­lel pub­lic health care sys­tem, “by vaps.”

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Mon­day Night Vir­tu­al re­port, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has no plan go­ing for­ward.

“To­day, the Prime Min­is­ter came and an­nounced more re­stric­tions but again where is the plan go­ing for­ward. They seem to be op­er­at­ing by vaps. So Thurs­day one thing, Sat­ur­day an­oth­er, Mon­day an­oth­er, maybe by to­mor­row....maybe by Wednes­day. Each day is vaps. There is no plan. There is no co­her­ent, com­pre­hen­sive plan as to how we go for­ward.”

Claim­ing that last year, Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the virus would not af­fect T&T, she said two months lat­er the coun­try shut down.

“So they had no plan. It is clear that the med­ical peo­ple had no plan, the gov­ern­ment had no plan, be­cause they were liv­ing in a fool’s par­adise that the COVID would not af­fect T&T.”

She added, “You had over a year, you could not deal with the mat­ter and you have the same peo­ple sit­ting down there pre­tend­ing to be sav­iours, pre­tend­ing to be the ex­perts, pre­tend­ing to be the ones to tell us we must do this, we must do that, we must do the oth­er. How can we be­lieve you? How can we trust you?”

Show­ing a pho­to in a dai­ly news­pa­per of Row­ley wear­ing his mask on his chin pos­ing with a group of peo­ple and not so­cial dis­tanc­ing, she ac­cused him of not fol­low­ing his own pro­to­cols.

“But yet you want to bouff up every­body in this coun­try. Bouff up the cit­i­zens of this coun­try. Bouff them, every time you speak you bouff­ing. You are the num­ber one bouf­fer in the land but you will not fol­low your own reg­u­la­tions and your own pro­to­cols.”

She al­so re­called that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was not wear­ing a mask or so­cial dis­tanc­ing dur­ing a hand-wrestling event.

Not­ing that the par­al­lel health care sys­tem is on the brink of col­lapse, she said the Gov­ern­ment fal­tered in se­cur­ing the vac­cines.

She said the Gov­ern­ment has not put any sup­port sys­tem in place to pro­tect liveli­hoods.

“The re­stric­tions you an­nounced to­day (Mon­day) will dec­i­mate mi­cro and small busi­ness, medi­um busi­ness­es and of course more job loss­es and most con­cern­ing is the rev­e­la­tion by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer that he raised the cur­rent trend in March but no ac­tion was tak­en. Be­fore East­er, the Prime Min­is­ter tell every­body come to To­ba­go, how reck­less and dan­ger­ous can you be.”

She ques­tioned what sup­port will be giv­en to the food busi­ness­es and street food ven­dors who would have spent thou­sands of dol­lars in buy­ing sup­plies.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said they should have had a plan to as­sist those not on­ly af­fect­ed by the virus but by this “dic­ta­tor­ship kind of lock­down.”

She said the Prime Min­is­ter should have put in place fis­cal mea­sures for loan de­fer­ral schemes for busi­ness­es and home­own­ers, adding that an­oth­er mea­sure should have been re­duced bank rates for loans and debt work-out schemes for com­pa­nies now deemed to fall un­der bank risks. The Op­po­si­tion leader al­so sug­gest­ed a re­new­al of SME fund ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, call­ing for a full au­dit, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy on all the mon­ey spent by the Gov­ern­ment on COVID-19. She al­so ad­vised peo­ple not to open their doors to po­lice of­fi­cers who want to en­ter their premis­es un­der the pro­vi­sion of the pub­lic health or­di­nance be­cause they could be crim­i­nals dis­guis­ing them­selves as po­lice of­fi­cers.

The Op­po­si­tion leader ar­gued that po­lice had no au­thor­i­ty un­der that pro­vi­sion to en­ter pri­vate res­i­dences.