Renu­ka Singh

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is deny­ing that some cit­i­zens linked to Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment coun­cil­lors are be­ing al­lowed pri­vate ac­cess to him and the bor­der ex­emp­tion process.

The ques­tion of line-jump­ing favours came up af­ter a short video clip sur­faced on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day show­ing Young talk­ing to a woman who asked about an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home.

The video call was fa­cil­i­tat­ed through a coun­cil­lor for the par­ty, who was al­so on the call.

Young yes­ter­day la­belled the fall­out and re­ac­tion to the video clip as "UNC mis­chief."

The short video clip cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia pur­port­ed­ly shows him di­rect­ing a fe­male caller to li­aise with a PNM mem­ber to ob­tain an ex­emp­tion to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In the short clip, which was wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day and gar­nered some neg­a­tive com­men­tary, the woman tells Young that she's been out of the coun­try, in Turks and Caicos, since De­cem­ber 2019 and could not get an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home due to the clo­sure of the bor­ders be­cause of the COVID-19 virus. She said she had ap­plied as soon as the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced ex­emp­tion pro­to­cols but still had not heard any­thing.

In the clip, Young apol­o­gis­es to the woman for the wait and asked her if she ap­plied un­der the new sys­tem. He then asks her the route she would take to get home.

Young even­tu­al­ly con­firms that the woman has the coun­cil­lor's in­for­ma­tion and di­rects her to send her trav­el in­for­ma­tion to the coun­cil­lor, who in turn would then for­ward that to Young. The clip ends at that point.

How­ev­er, Young yes­ter­day dis­missed the clip as "mis­chief" from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. He said on March 8 he ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to ad­dress a vir­tu­al meet­ing with the con­stituen­cy of Arou­ca/Mal­oney and this is where the mat­ter was raised.

"It has been drawn to my at­ten­tion that the UNC and its sup­port­ers are cir­cu­lat­ing a video clip of a ques­tion asked of me dur­ing the course of the vir­tu­al meet­ing, where an in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pat­ing in the said meet­ing used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask me about her ap­pli­ca­tion for an ex­emp­tion to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go," Young said.

Young said he has not grant­ed that caller an ex­emp­tion as yet, adding he is of­ten "ap­proached by hun­dreds of per­sons re­quest­ing that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to their ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­emp­tions to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go."

"These per­son­al ap­proach­es are made via email, text mes­sages, What­sApp mes­sages, pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters, let­ters (in­clud­ing let­ters from Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, both the UNC and the PNM), tele­phone calls and even phys­i­cal­ly stop­ping me in pub­lic and mak­ing such re­quests for ex­emp­tion to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go," Young said.

He said as has been stat­ed from the first day that T&T's bor­ders were closed, "every re­quest for ex­emp­tion to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­sid­ered on a case by case ba­sis."

"This par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent, where a re­quest was made of me, for an ex­emp­tion to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the said vir­tu­al meet­ing by a per­son, is no dif­fer­ent to the hun­dreds of re­quests made of me and has re­ceived no dif­fer­ent treat­ment. In fact, to date, this par­tic­u­lar ap­pli­ca­tion (re­quest) has not been ap­proved," Young said.

"Ac­cord­ing­ly, once again, I am com­pelled to re­ject the mis­chief and des­per­a­tion of the UNC and to re­as­sure the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, whom I serve, that I stay true to my oath of of­fice. I will con­tin­ue to do my best to serve the pop­u­la­tion of my beloved coun­try."