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Sunday, July 6, 2025

PM dismisses talk of Tobago shutdown

by

Renuka Singh and Loyse Vincent
1437 days ago
20210729

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day ques­tioned the so-called “stake­hold­ers” spread­ing spec­u­la­tion about a loom­ing shut­down in To­ba­go.

Yes­ter­day there was chat­ter among the tourism and busi­ness sec­tor in To­ba­go that there would be a slow­down of the re­open­ing of the coun­try in light of the climb­ing COVID-19 num­bers.

This, the Prime Min­is­ter strong­ly re­fut­ed.

“Stake­hold­ers? Who are they?” he asked yes­ter­day.

“When they want to spread lies and fake news they call them­selves “stake­hold­ers”,” he said.

Row­ley said that the Gov­ern­ment has been “most open and trans­par­ent” in its COVID man­age­ment.

“And if there is any ad­just­ment to be made then the Gov­ern­ment sources will ad­vise the pub­lic prompt­ly,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that that was what “the peo­ple of T&T have been and con­tin­ue to be ac­cus­tomed to”.

Row­ley ques­tioned whether those spread­ing the ru­mours were the same ones de­mand­ing a speed­i­er re­open­ing to all beach­es, bars and restau­rants.

Mean­while, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell was al­so not sure who start­ed the spec­u­la­tion.

“As Min­is­ter, what is of para­mount con­cern right now is the health and safe­ty of our cit­i­zens and their pro­tec­tion from COVID-19 through vac­ci­na­tion,” Mitchell said.

“That is most im­per­a­tive at this stage,” he said.

Among the chat­ter, Guardian Me­dia al­so re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that ca­pac­i­ty on the in­ter-is­land air­bridge was re­duced fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the vari­ant in To­ba­go.

Se­nior Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er at Caribbean Air­line Dionne Ligoure ad­vised that “due to the state of emer­gency ca­pac­i­ty on the air bridge can on­ly be ad­just­ed based on in­struc­tion from the Min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan to find out if ad­just­ments will be made on the in­ter­is­land sea bridge.

He said, “all en­quiries re­lat­ed to COVID-19 Health re­stric­tions should be di­rect­ed to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.”

How­ev­er, af­ter con­tact­ing the Health Min­is­ter, his Se­nior Ad­min­is­tra­tive Of­fi­cer ad­vised that “all en­quiries re­lat­ed to in­ter is­land trav­el should be di­rect­ed to Min­is­ter Sinanan.


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