Apart from Opposition United National Congress (UNC) Member of Parliament Dr Roodal Moonilal there were a few other passengers on last Sunday’s Caribbean Airlines’ (CAL) Miami flight who also had difficulties completing the Travel Pass document to enter T&T.
Moonilal who returned on that flight confirmed this yesterday. The pass is needed by travellers to re-enter as part of COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
Moonilal had tried since last Saturday to complete the pass on his smartphone but the system froze on his application 25 times without indication of what he should do and his application remained unconfirmed.
At Miami Airport he was assisted by CAL staff who indicated the size of the files of his PCR test results and other records to be uploaded to the form, were too large for the smartphone.
When he landed Moonilal said he was told by one authority where he presented documents that a few other passengers had similar difficulties completing the form.
Digital Transformation Minister Hassel Bacchus was in meetings yesterday. Ministry officials indicated the situation with the pass is being monitored.
Moonilal said, “The pass needs to be user friendly to the average passenger. Some people still have Nokia phones and not everyone travels with laptops, picture converters and printers to do what the form requires.”
“We truly hope they heed appeals since the Minister’s first name doesn’t exactly lend comfort to the situation,’’ he quipped.
Moonilal cited issues to rectify:
• ↓State what device the pass form can best be done on successfully - laptop, phone. etc.
• ↓Give advisories on the form when a traveller does a process wrong, their files are too big to input or their final page isn’t approved.
• ↓Specify type of files which passengers’ records should be given in or converted to for the form to accept.
• ↓Re-examine the stipulation to do the form 72 hours before flight since the PCR test results must be uploaded to the form and one has to wait 72 hours pre-flight to get that result.
• ↓The list of regions in T&T for people to state where they live should be easily available for input.
• ↓Adjust the list of vaccines where people must identify the one they took and its source (Covishield etc). People may not know the source of their vaccine but all information on their vaccine is on their immunisation card which also has to be uploaded to the form as well as being stated on the form.
• Reduce repetitions on the form such as stating the PCR results and also uploading the results document.