Al-Rawi tells UN: Trinidad and Tobago's covid19 care among the best

ATTORNEY General Faris Al-Rawi has said Trinidad and Tobago's response to the covid19 pandemic is up there among the best, when compared with other countries around the world.

Al-Rawi expressed this opinion when he addressed during the virtual 39th session of the UN's Universal Periodic Review Working Group's review of human rights in TT, on Tuesday.

He told delegates, "For us covid, has been an extremely difficult situation, as it has been for the rest of the world.

"We are very pleased to have operationalised our covid environment by a suite of services which are targeted at the individual-level perspective and the societal-relief perspective."

He said billions of dollars have been spent "in ensuring salary relief grants, access to food, access to services.

"We have utilised our public health regulations in conjunction with our wider civil-society arrangements to ensure that we have developed a parallel health care system (for the treatment of covid19 patients)."

This parallel health care system, he said, "can challenge some of the most advanced democracies, and has resulted in us moving to live with the virus."

In presenting TT's report to the group, Al-Rawi said Government was pleased to say the report was based on consultations with some 52 stakeholder groups on a wide range of issues.

"We believe that any review of our society has to touch the issues of our vulnerable (individuals and groups)."

In his 2022 budget presentation in the House of Representatives on October 4, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said, "We have incurred expenditures of over $5 billion through covid19 relief for individuals and businesses, including small and medium-sized businesses as well as economy-wide liquidity support with an associated lowering of interest rates by the Central Bank."