JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 21, 2025

Young seeks sea quarantine for 300 cruise workers

by

1884 days ago
20200525
Members of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force supervise the arrival of six Trinidadian nationals at the University of the West Indies' Debe Campus on Saturday night. The nationals were taken by boat to the Port-of Port-of-Spain, where they were met by soldiers and taken by convoy to Debe where they will be quarantined for 14 days.

Members of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force supervise the arrival of six Trinidadian nationals at the University of the West Indies' Debe Campus on Saturday night. The nationals were taken by boat to the Port-of Port-of-Spain, where they were met by soldiers and taken by convoy to Debe where they will be quarantined for 14 days.

Courtesy Ministry of National Security

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored