Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal busi­ness­woman Sascha Singh, who is a di­rec­tor of pri­vate jet char­ter com­pa­ny, Bliss­full Jets in Mi­a­mi, is de­fend­ing her com­pa­ny fol­low­ing the launch of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure that com­pa­nies like hers aren’t “trick­ing” des­per­ate na­tion­als with false promis­es of ex­emp­tions.

In a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the 35-year-old busi­ness­woman said al­though Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young was care­ful not to name any­one in his re­marks dur­ing a Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Mon­day,

it was ob­vi­ous that it was di­rect­ed at her.

“He did not use my name but every­one knows it’s me be­cause I’m the on­ly one who came out with a pri­vate jet ad with­in the last cou­ple of weeks,” she said while as­sur­ing that her com­pa­ny does not promise cus­tomers ex­emp­tions.

“We can­not get you any ex­empt. We can­not take your mon­ey for an ex­empt. I even told a cus­tomer who asked why don’t we pay for the ex­empt—I said that was il­le­gal. We can­not do that.”

She said three oth­er com­pa­nies are of­fer­ing the char­tered flights to T&T and her com­pa­ny fol­lows the same pro­to­col as those. She added that na­tion­als char­ter­ing flights are re­quired to ap­ply for their ex­emp­tions.

“You have to ap­ply for your ex­emp­tion in­di­vid­u­al­ly and what we as a com­pa­ny do, we ask them to for­ward that to us so that we could do our group ap­pli­ca­tion for the jet...as per stat­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. If it’s a group of per­sons and it’s a pri­vate jet com­pa­ny- the com­pa­ny ap­plies show­ing full pay­ment and then they pro­ceed with the ap­pli­ca­tion,” she de­scribed.

She ex­plained that if the pas­sen­gers aren’t giv­en the ex­emp­tion by the min­istry, they are re­fund­ed their mon­ey.

Singh said she wel­comed the min­istry’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion but in­sist­ed that Min­is­ter Young should have let it run its course be­fore mak­ing any pre­ma­ture re­marks in pub­lic. She ar­gued that she is be­ing sin­gled out by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty over an an­gry email she sent him plead­ing for the na­tion­als to be al­lowed back in­to the coun­try.

Ad­dress­ing the mat­ter dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Young said: “I am go­ing to be ask­ing the au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate whether per­sons were fooled or tricked in­to pay­ing their mon­ey on the ba­sis that, by the pay­ment of that mon­ey they would get ap­proval to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He as­sured that “there is no char­ter com­pa­ny in the world that has the au­thor­i­ty to bring peo­ple in with the in­di­vid­u­als get­ting ap­proval.”

“I can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that this is com­plete­ly false and mis­lead­ing.”