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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Southerners not taking virus serious enough—Rowley

by

Gail Alexander
1824 days ago
20200731
Members of the public move about on High Street, San Fernando, on Thursday. Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has noted that many of them have not been taking the COVID-19 protocols seriously enough.

Members of the public move about on High Street, San Fernando, on Thursday. Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has noted that many of them have not been taking the COVID-19 protocols seriously enough.

Rishi Ragoonath

Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter the surge of COVID-19 clus­ter cas­es, law en­force­ment must act to en­sure that peo­ple—in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties—com­ply with the COVID re­stric­tions now. And south­ern­ers are flout­ing the COVID re­stric­tions the most, says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing on the in­creased num­ber of COVID cas­es, now to­talling 169, Row­ley said the Pub­lic Health or­di­nance re­quires law en­force­ment to en­sure things are done prop­er­ly. If peo­ple con­gre­gate in larg­er num­bers, in­clud­ing par­ties, then law en­force­ment must act “…not as pun­ish­ment but as preser­va­tion to pro­tect the pub­lic.”

Row­ley said the same ap­plied to bars and restau­rants.

“They’re open and we ex­pect­ed se­ri­ous law en­force­ment around then and I’m to won­der why, giv­en the lev­el of lack of co-op­er­a­tion some peo­ple demon­strat­ed, I’m not see­ing the odd per­son dragged be­fore the court and pay­ing fines. I’m do­ing my job as Prime Min­is­ter and I ex­pect­ed oth­ers will do their jobs al­so,” he said.

“If peo­ple feel this is a joke they must be made to un­der­stand it’s not a joke and no dare and dou­ble-dare, it’s not machis­mo—it’s com­mon sense.”

He said the state will en­sure there is more ac­tive law en­force­ment on the sit­u­a­tion to en­force the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance and peo­ple were ex­pect­ed to obey and be sen­si­ble.

“If not you’ll fall afoul (of the law) and we ex­pect the law will be en­forced against you,’’ he said.

Row­ley lament­ed that South­ern­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly aren’t tak­ing the COVID mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly. He said the im­pres­sion is that it’s a prob­lem in an­oth­er part of T&T and it’s an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal side’s is­sue.

“That will get T&T in se­ri­ous trou­ble, this virus doesn’t re­spect peo­ple, race, creed, colour, class or politi­cian—they need to get on board,” he said.

He lament­ed peo­ple who said there’s no COVID in T&T and Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to op­press peo­ple.

Row­ley al­so ap­pealed for co-op­er­a­tion on con­tact trac­ing, which he said is to pro­tect “the life of you and yours—the in­for­ma­tion shared has to do with life and death. No group is ex­empt from this virus.”

Row­ley clar­i­fied fig­ures on the num­ber of na­tion­als who re­ceived ex­emp­tions to leave and en­ter T&T. He said 5,580 got per­mis­sion to leave and 5,539 had ap­plied to en­ter as at Ju­ly 29. He said en­try ex­emp­tions were grant­ed to 2,250 and 3,389 are await­ing, adding Gov­ern­ment was man­ag­ing this and “bring­ing them in by the hun­dreds.”

On re­turn­ing na­tion­als, he said first pref­er­ence was for those who live in T&T and were ill or had small chil­dren. So far, he said T&T has al­lowed in 538 peo­ple from the US and 417 from cruise ships.

COVID-19


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