Dozens of Trinidad and To­ba­go oil­field work­ers in Mex­i­co have is­sued a plea to the gov­ern­ment to al­low them to re­turn home.

The work­ers is­sued a state­ment to the me­dia Wednes­day night say­ing they are cur­rent­ly strand­ed there.

They say that be­fore go­ing to Mex­i­co, they were work­ing on a drilling in­stal­la­tion lo­cat­ed in Trinidad for over five years adding that they were of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on a drilling in­stal­la­tion in Mex­i­co dur­ing the start-up phas­es.

"We left Trinidad on March 6th, 2020 and board­ed the in­stal­la­tion in Cuidad Del Car­men Mex­i­co on the 9th March 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion, we were un­able to re­turn home on our sched­uled date some 28 days lat­er," the work­er said.

They added: "Up to to­day (June 3, 2020), close to 90 days lat­er, we are await­ing the ap­proval from the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment to re­turn home. We the work­ers are psy­chi­cal­ly, men­tal­ly, spir­i­tu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly ex­haust­ed by not be­ing grant­ed the ap­proval date to re­turn to our fam­i­lies and loved ones. Our fam­i­lies are al­so great­ly af­fect­ed by this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion."

The work­ers say their em­ploy­er has al­ready char­tered a flight and made the re­quest to the gov­ern­ment for their safe re­turn home.

"We do sym­pa­thize with all Trin­bag­on­ian's that can't re­turn to their home coun­try around the world. Our job dic­tates that we are un­der strict HSE (Health, Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment) guide­lines, have been con­fined in our en­vi­ron­ment for close to 90 days and are low risk in terms of COVID con­trac­tion," the work­ers say.

They added: "We are plead­ing to the gov­ern­ment to re­turn us, es­sen­tial and tax-pay­ing work­ers who have played a crit­i­cal part in de­liv­er­ing the na­tion’s en­er­gy sec­tor rev­enue over the last five to ten years."

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said that all T&T na­tion­als will be al­lowed home but that the gov­ern­ment will have to con­trol how they are al­lowed back in the coun­try un­der the cur­rent COVID-19 re­stric­tions.