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Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Opposition slams ‘inconsiderate’ restrictions

by

Gail Alexander
1580 days ago
20210430
Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Abraham Diaz

No con­sid­er­a­tion is how the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress de­scribed the lat­est lock­down mea­sures an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day.

A state­ment from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar slammed the mea­sures, stat­ing, “In the same man­ner as last year’s mea­sures, Kei­th Row­ley’s new ones are be­ing done mi­nus prop­er plan. He’s said once again the coun­try has no mon­ey and there­fore is un­able to pro­vide any sup­port to busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als who would suf­fer in com­ing weeks due to the eco­nom­ic im­pacts of these mea­sures.

“There’s a per­ti­nent need to do all it takes to pro­tect cit­i­zens’ lives and well­be­ing, but this must be done while al­so pro­tect­ing their abil­i­ty to put food on their ta­bles, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She con­tin­ued, ‘’Gov­ern­ment’s mantra that ‘we’re all in this to­geth­er’ rings hol­low, giv­en that the Prime Min­is­ter spent a large part of his pre­sen­ta­tion blam­ing cit­i­zens for the surge in cas­es. One would have thought that af­ter hav­ing just re­cov­ered from COVID-19, he’d have had a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to the rise in cas­es. In­stead, in his usu­al style, he blamed cit­i­zens for the re­cent spike, con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting he re­cent­ly had a ram­page in To­ba­go where he even­tu­al­ly con­tract­ed COVID.’’

The state­ment added, “To de­flect from his Gov­ern­ment’s ab­solute fail­ure, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley came to blame cit­i­zens, the vac­cines, and old­er peo­ple who may have been vis­it­ing a loved one. Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment al­so re­fused to ac­knowl­edge their fail­ure to se­cure mar­itime bor­ders as it’s quite pos­si­ble the Brazil­ian Vari­ant came via an il­le­gal mi­grant cross­ing the porous bor­der.’’

Op­po­si­tion MP Dave Tan­coo added, “ If bor­ders aren’t ef­fec­tive­ly closed, vari­ants will con­tin­ue grow­ing. How can he blame the PP Gov­ern­ment for the bor­ders when his Gov­ern­ment wast­ed five years and $275 bil­lion un­der­fund­ing and un­der-re­sourc­ing the Coast Guard.

“Row­ley’s state­ment showed fail­ure on every­thing from vac­cine sourc­ing to con­tact trac­ing and bor­der con­trol yet he con­tin­ues blam­ing oth­ers. But how can he con­tin­ue to blame peo­ple for be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble when he says he doesn’t even know how he got in­fect­ed?’’, Tan­coo asked.

He added, “Gov­ern­ment hasn’t been able to clear­ly con­firm a date for new vac­cines and he con­fessed that what they’d gloat­ed about- in­clud­ing US vac­cines - aren’t hap­pen­ing soon.

“With this sit­u­a­tion and jug­gling of stocks, Gov­ern­ment must en­sure enough vac­cines to sup­ply the sec­ond shot to the 40,000 peo­ple who re­cent­ly got their first shot. And that must be the re­quired time­frame need­ed for the full dose to be ef­fec­tive.

“As­traZeneca’s a two-shot dose, how ef­fec­tive will on­ly one dose be? Es­pe­cial­ly for se­niors or ill peo­ple. How ef­fec­tive will the dose be if the sec­ond shot comes long af­ter the first?”, Tan­coo ques­tioned.


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