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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

PM’s illness shows Govt’s COVID plans not working—UNC

by

Gail Alexander
1575 days ago
20210407
MP for Couva South Rudranath Indarsingh.

MP for Couva South Rudranath Indarsingh.

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.”


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