Charles: TT citizens languishing in Barbados and elsewhere
Tomorrow a specially arranged charter flight will depart Piarco, using our closed air space, to repatriate US citizens desirous of returning home.
Our nationals by contrast must depend on the goodwill of host countries for their very survival.
It is each man for himself if you have a TT passport abroad….. even as we help others to return to their homes.
Last week the British government arranged a special flight from Piarco to repatriate its citizens.
Yesterday UK foreign minister Dominic Raab advised that his government allocated 75 million pounds to bring home stranded citizens.
“Where commercial flights are no longer running, the Government will provide the necessary financial support for special charter flights to bring UK nationals home,.” Raab stressed.
The majority of governments, valuing citizenship above all else, are assisting citizens stranded abroad in this Covid crisis. Justin Trudeau, while admitting that at any given time there are 3 million Canadians living and working abroad and it will be impossible to bring all back home, has committed to trying.
“Canadians are expecting this of their government and we are going to be doing it”, the Globe and Mail reports.
Not TT citizens stranded abroad. Not even our elderly taxpayers. Crapaud smoke their pipe. These as taxpayers contributed significantly to our country’s wealth in some cases before Young, Faris and company were born.
Eric Williams understood the value of helping citizens abroad in distress when he paid the fines of our Sir George Williams students in Canada and brought them back home. This Rowley brand of the PNM would have left them to their own devices.
Citizenship means everything in most countries. Not today in TT.
The US leaves no stone unturned to retrieve even the bones of its soldiers killed decades before. Even dead American citizens are cherished above all else.
According to the gospel under Young et al: You are on your own if you find yourself in difficulty abroad and any excuse will be used to justify their callousness.
“Why would bringing back our citizens from Barbados affect us if they are placed in quarantine upon arrival? asks Charles.
What does Barbados know about safe quarantine arrangements of which we are not aware?
And what about the biblical injunction: “If you do it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me”?
Rodney Charles
MP for Naparima