Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

UK Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Steve Bak­er has is­sued an ap­peal to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens strand­ed in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Speak­ing in the UK Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Bak­er, the MP for Wycombe, said there are T&T cit­i­zens in his con­stituen­cy who have been de­plet­ing their sav­ings as they await repa­tri­a­tion. (See page 9)

T&T’s bor­ders have been closed since the end of March and thou­sands of cit­i­zens who were caught out­side when it went in­to ef­fect have been ap­peal­ing for an ex­emp­tion to come home.

While the repa­tri­a­tion process is on­go­ing, many of those who are strand­ed say it is not go­ing quick­ly enough as some have been strand­ed for over six months.

Bak­er, when giv­en his op­por­tu­ni­ty to put ques­tions to the min­is­ters from the For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice (FC­DO), asked what was be­ing done to as­sist T&T cit­i­zens strand­ed in the UK.

“I’ve got Trinidad and To­ba­go res­i­dents or cit­i­zens in my con­stituen­cy burn­ing through their sav­ings re­al­ly ter­ri­fied about fail­ing to get home to pro­tect their homes and busi­ness­es from ap­proach­ing se­vere weath­er. Can I ask the min­is­ter to join me in call­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go to make sure their cit­i­zens get home, I think it’s our com­mon hu­man­i­ty to en­able peo­ple to re­turn home to pro­tect their homes,” Bak­er said.

In re­sponse, Wendy Mor­ton, Min­is­ter for Eu­ro­pean Neigh­bour­hood and the Amer­i­c­as at the FC­DO, ad­vised strand­ed cit­i­zens to con­tact the T&T High Com­mis­sion­er in Lon­don.

“The FC­DO has alert­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion to cas­es of strand­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als that we have been made aware of and sup­port­ed af­fect­ed in­di­vid­u­als to con­tact the High Com­mis­sion di­rect­ly. It is al­so im­por­tant to say that we are in reg­u­lar con­tact with our coun­ter­parts in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Mor­ton said.

Founder of the T&T Cit­i­zens Over­seas group, Gary Ma­habir, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said he was not sur­prised the is­sue was raised in the UK Par­lia­ment. Ma­habir said since the lock­down there had been no repa­tri­a­tion flights from Eng­land to T&T, adding he has been try­ing to di­rect strand­ed na­tion­als to Bar­ba­dos hop­ing the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide repa­tri­a­tion flights from there. He said those who were strand­ed got no as­sis­tance from this coun­try’s for­eign mis­sions.

“The con­sulates can’t guar­an­tee as­sis­tance and what made it very chaot­ic was that our for­eign mis­sions were not help­ful,” Ma­habir said.

Ma­habir said the time had run out for many cit­i­zens, some of whom are now home­less, de­pressed and on the verge of giv­ing up.

“This is an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion, we need to put pol­i­tics, any­thing else aside and come to­geth­er. Why can’t elect­ed of­fi­cials come off their thrones and as­sist the peo­ple? They are paid to this, I would like the peo­ple in Trinidad to be­come more con­scious of what is hap­pen­ing to our peo­ple, peo­ple went on va­ca­tion with lim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey and they have no source what­so­ev­er of in­come, our peo­ple are suf­fer­ing.”

Ma­habir has spent the last sev­er­al months lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and the me­dia to high­light the plight of the strand­ed cit­i­zens. He said re­cent­ly, he stopped try­ing to con­tact Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and be­gan in­stead send­ing his emails and pleas to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“I have be­come sort of an un­of­fi­cial am­bas­sador for peo­ple strand­ed all over the world. I can’t give any­one an ex­emp­tion and I am not a rich per­son but I can­not just let my fel­low cit­i­zens starve and suf­fer out­side with­out try­ing to do every­thing I can to get them home,” Ma­habir said.