A policy to bring our people home

LET'S START with the proposition that the people caught on the wrong side of our closed borders are also citizens of TT. As such, they are as entitled to the protection and support of the State as are the Trinis within.

Border closures were initiated by many countries to limit exposure and spread of covid19. TT's borders were shut on March 22. We are now in June. Understandably, for people stuck outside, many are caught in a vise of unimaginable difficulty.

Debts and expenses are mounting as they are forced to stay abroad for periods far longer than their finances had catered for. Others have responsibilities to jobs, businesses and families here at home.

For the most part, there has been a sweeping ambivalence among the population towards the exiled. In some instances, the boundless capacity for heartlessness in our citizens has truly blossomed. On Facebook, many had the most uncharitable things to say about nationals who found themselves in a bind.

This false narrative of reckless citizens was spun

in the earlies by actors of the State. Think back to the first batch of cruise ship passengers trying to come home. Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh was quoted in a news story as saying that despite the Government having earlier issued warnings to people travelling overseas, the 68 people had embarked on a cruise on March 5, a month after the Government had first made the announcement.

If we go with those timelines, it's important to remember these doh-care cruisers made their travel plans during the height of the Carnival season. This is when we were inviting tens of thousands of people to come into the country to practise social nearness.

Additionally, PM Rowley travelled to Ghana around the same time the cruise ship 68 were being festooned by Captain Stubing with garlands. Of course, there was the infamous entry of Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez with a contingent of shadows on Wonder Woman's plane...after the borders had already been closed.

At briefings, the Health Minister routinely identified the cruise ship passengers' contribution to TT's overall covid19 statistics. This was done to make a distinction between imported cases and community spread, yes. The net effect, though, was a demonisation of these citizens as irresponsible and dangerous. A headline in a newspaper about returning citizens read, "Slack Trinis."

The Government keeps this narrative alive in its treatment of stranded cruise ship workers desperate to make their way home. Furthering the fear-mongering, both the PM and Stuart Young have referenced the figure of more than 300,000 Trinis abroad in ongoing conversations about stranded nationals.

Without identifying how many of that figure have actually applied to come home, it fuels the fevered imaginations of weak-minded people here, conjuring nightmares of countless invading Huns all bent on apocalypse by pandemic. I suspect a large proportion of that figure comprises Trinis happily ensconced in developed countries who wouldn't put God of out their thoughts to come back here.

It was made easy to forget that many people caught abroad were there to work because of the paucity of local jobs. Others were seeking medical treatment because they don't want to die in our hopeless hospitals.

Under the best of circumstances, it's difficult for many Trinis to process facts beyond what their toxic politics tell them. People are parroting this claptrap about X number of quarantine beds. "How will we accommodate all these Trinis who want to come home?" As if it's being proposed everyone be allowed in at the same time.

The last covid19 patient has been discharged from the Caura facility. Is the plan to keep the facilities empty to prop up a narrative of victory? By the way, 20,000 Trinis skated back into the country just before the borders were closed. If a reasonable fraction of them turned up sick, how would the quarantine system have held up? This is the same system we've been holding up as a beacon to the world. Now, we're saying we can't quarantine just a few hundred.

The Government keeps using the lofty term “management of covid19.” What the authorities have been doing in the main isn't management, but avoidance. Avoidance is not a strategy. Unless the plan is to hermetically seal this country until next year, the Government must immediately identify a policy to bring our stranded nationals home. They had two months to work out a re-entry arrangement. What did they do with the time?