Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says over 300 na­tion­als stuck on a ship off Bar­ba­dos will be al­lowed to come home if the cruise ship com­pa­ny agrees to quar­an­tine them at sea off Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Young made the com­ment yes­ter­day in the wake of the re­turn of six na­tion­als on Sat­ur­day night and the ex­pect­ed re­turn of an­oth­er 53 to­day from the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy cruise ship.

The six na­tion­als who re­turned Sat­ur­day were tak­en to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Debe cam­pus for their 14-day quar­an­tine.

Speak­ing on I95FM on Sun­day, how­ev­er, Young said he has al­so been in talks with Roy­al Caribbean’s Vi­sion of the Seas cruise ship, which is cur­rent­ly in Bar­ba­dos wa­ters with 300-plus na­tion­als on board. But he said he was hop­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to the quar­an­tine process for that ves­sel, since the Gov­ern­ment could not un­der­take to fa­cil­i­tate such a huge num­ber of re­turn­ing na­tion­als.

He said once there are no pos­i­tive cas­es in the 14-day pe­ri­od, the na­tion­als on board would be al­lowed to go straight to their homes af­ter leav­ing the ship.   

“What I’m go­ing to try to work out with the cruise ship com­pa­ny is come and an­chor in our wa­ters and let us do the quar­an­tine of our cruise ship work­ers, those 300-plus on the ship, with our pub­lic health of­fi­cials mon­i­tor­ing and do­ing the nec­es­sary med­ical as­sess­ments and ex­am­i­na­tions, hope­ful­ly no pos­i­tive cas­es present and you come and you go home,” Young said.

He said he has al­so been in talks with the prin­ci­pals of the var­i­ous Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies cam­pus­es to repa­tri­ate stu­dents there.

“What we have done is asked the prin­ci­pals of the three cam­pus­es, be­cause there are var­i­ous ex­am­i­na­tions dates and they are dif­fer­ent in each cam­pus, so I’ve asked them to work with us and work out the prefer­able dates for the stu­dents,” Young said.

He al­so as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment would keep its promise to repa­tri­ate all T&T na­tion­als de­sirous of re­turn­ing home.

Young’s plan comes even as St Au­gus­tine MP Prakash Ra­mad­har has called for a com­mit­tee to be set up to over­see the repa­tri­a­tion of Trinida­di­ans cur­rent­ly stuck abroad. Ra­mad­har said now that there were no cas­es of COVID-19 in the coun­try, the al­most 1,000-bed stock no longer in use at the var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions used to treat pre­vi­ous pa­tients could be used to house the re­turn­ing na­tion­als.

Mean­while, a Ch­agua­nas moth­er is call­ing on Young to say when her son and oth­er na­tion­als stuck in Caribbean coun­tries will be grant­ed ex­emp­tions to come home.

Nar­isa Mo­hammed said her fam­i­ly’s Eid cel­e­bra­tions were marred by the ab­sence of her son Ziyad Mo­hammed.

Ziyad, 27, trav­elled to Tor­to­la in the British Vir­gin Is­lands last year to ac­cept a one-year con­tract with an ac­count­ing agency. That con­tract came to an end on March 26.

Mo­hammed said her son had al­ready giv­en up his apart­ment and sold his car to come home when T&T’s bor­ders were closed on March 22.

“If any­one knows me, I am very fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed and I thought Riyad would have been with us to cel­e­brate Eid. I feel an empti­ness with­out him here,” she said yes­ter­day.

She said Riyad was now stay­ing in an­oth­er apart­ment and al­though he is in good health, the un­cer­tain­ty of when he will be al­lowed home is tak­ing a toll on him.

“It’s the fear of the un­known, know­ing he is alone there. And for me, its a moth­er’s fear, just hop­ing that every­thing would be okay. I just want­ed the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to hear the plea of the cit­i­zens who want to come home, re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances of all these peo­ple, they have a right to come home.”

She said there were on­ly eight COVID-19 cas­es in Tor­to­la and just like T&T, the is­land cur­rent­ly has no ac­tive cas­es. She said her fam­i­ly has writ­ten to Young on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions seek­ing an ex­emp­tion and had even hired an at­tor­ney to write to Young on their be­half.

She said her Eid prayer is that the au­thor­i­ties and the pub­lic can find love in their hearts and those na­tion­als strand­ed abroad can be al­lowed to come home.