Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s COVID-19 ill­ness has shown that Gov­ern­ment’s COVID mea­sures aren’t work­ing, says Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rudy In­dars­ingh.

The Op­po­si­tion didn’t is­sue an of­fi­cial state­ment fol­low­ing word yes­ter­day that Row­ley had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and was in iso­la­tion. Some se­nior UNC MPs de­clined to com­ment on it. A few sim­ply wished him well.

But In­dars­ingh told Guardian Me­dia, “His ill­ness has demon­strat­ed that he hasn’t known what the COVID pro­to­cols should re­al­ly have been and that he’s dis­played a high lev­el of in­dis­cre­tion and in­dis­ci­pline.

“One would have as­sumed that the Gov­ern­ment’s COVID-19 plans would have made us, es­pe­cial­ly him, safer from COVID-19, but ob­vi­ous­ly that’s not the case. Al­so, de­spite our bor­ders re­main­ing closed, the Prime Min­is­ter con­tract­ed COVID-19. This sug­gests con­tin­ued bor­der clo­sure isn’t a fool-proof mea­sure and con­tin­ues to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly, so­cial­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly counter-pro­duc­tive,” In­dars­ingh said.

“Cab­i­net mem­bers, OPM staff and oth­ers in his Trinidad house­hold, as well as in To­ba­go, now need to be quar­an­tined and test­ed. Pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary con­tacts must be found quick­ly.”

In­dars­ingh added, “His ill­ness al­so comes on the heels of a sit­u­a­tion where his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was seen frater­nising with peo­ple with­out a mask. So the PM’s sit­u­a­tion is a les­son not to T&T but all his col­leagues.

“It’s al­so note­wor­thy that Dr Row­ley was nei­ther in the Ca­roni nor Vic­to­ria dis­tricts, but was in To­ba­go where two po­lice of­fi­cers re­cent­ly test­ed pos­i­tive. Cou­pled with the re­cent in­flux of per­sons there over the East­er week­end, there are now le­git­i­mate con­cerns re­gard­ing virus spread in To­ba­go.

“We just have to re­call what oc­curred with the Jan­u­ary THA elec­tion where PNM sup­port­ers were seen danc­ing with no so­cial dis­tanc­ing or masks.

“We must now se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er whether Dr Row­ley’s lead­er­ship is in­deed ef­fec­tive and whether his Gov­ern­ment’s rel­e­vant in the COVID fight and its evolv­ing dy­nam­ics.”

In­dars­ingh, as well as Op­po­si­tion MPs Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Bar­ry Padarath and oth­ers said they’ll take the COVID vac­cine when front­line and at-risk peo­ple have got­ten vac­ci­nat­ed and ac­cord­ing to sup­plies en­ter­ing T&T. UNC MP Dave Tan­coo said this was more or less the par­ty’s po­si­tion.

“We’ll en­sure that those who need it ur­gent­ly get the vac­cine be­fore we go for it,” Tan­coo said.

Oth­er UNC of­fi­cials said that UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ar­tic­u­lat­ed a sim­i­lar po­si­tion. They couldn’t say if the fact that Row­ley, 71, had con­tract­ed the virus, would prompt her to change her po­si­tion on when she would take the vac­cine. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has man­aged her health is­sues over the years and sources added that she con­tin­ues to pay at­ten­tion to her health “just like every­one else is do­ing.”