UNC: Covid-19 SOE
The UNC supports initiatives aimed at saving lives and livelihoods and getting this virus under control. However, we reserve the right to raise concerns and to hold the government to account.
* We support vaccination as a priority in the fight against Covid.
* We encourage all to consult your doctor and get vaccinated
accordingly. Each person’s health is unique and therefore it is
best to consult a doctor.
* We continue to urge government to take all essential steps to get
sufficient vaccines for our population at the earliest.
* The UNC will continue to hold the Rowley government
accountable for the expenditure of taxpayers’ funds. 18 billion
dollars spent with no accountability.
* The UNC urges the Government to take every step to support
businesses and SME’s and workers.
* With billions reportedly spent on COVID, and Government’s plans
to take on additional debt, the UNC calls for transparency and
accountability.
A State of Emergency with borders still unprotected and unguarded is no lockdown. Keith Rowley’s gross mismanagement of our national security left our borders wide open, allowing the Brazilian P1 variant into the country.
Rowley sat on his hands and only made excuses, right up to yesterday, as to why he did not secure vaccines for Trinidad and Tobago earlier this year, when our CARICOM neighbours were doing so.
Indeed, in his exposition of facts in his CARICOM vaccine chart on Saturday, he conveniently left out Trinidad and Tobago. If he had put our country there, everyone would see that we are LAST in terms of vaccine doses for our population.
The Opposition pushed vaccination from the beginning, but the Prime Minister tried his best to ignore it. Now, we have the Prime Minister throwing his hands up in the air.
The Prime Minister has bungled every step along the way in the fight against COVID, and the citizens of our nation are the unfortunate victims of his mismanagement, incompetence and cluelessness.
Here are some urgent questions that Keith Rowley must answer:
1. Where are the regulations made pursuant to the State of
Emergency? After 24 hours of the announcement of a SOE,
people are left in confusion as to what is allowed or not allowed.
2. Given current restrictions, where businesses are already closed at
8pm, are numbers expected to fall because of the 9pm to 5am
curfew?
3. Is the government reinventing the wheel of Covid management
or has it looked at what other countries are doing?
5. What analysis is being done to determine why the numbers are
increasing when during the recent general election period, there
were far more public gatherings but fewer active cases and
deaths. Is it the P1 (Brazilian variant) that is causing the
overloading of the health services?
6. What are the government’s plans for after this state of
emergency? With insufficient vaccines and porous borders the
country will be back to square one.
The UNC Members of Parliament, as well as our local government representatives, continue to be inundated with requests for food and other basic forms of assistance by members of the public. It is abundantly clear that many citizens are facing severe hardships as a result of the lockdown.
To date the promised relief application forms are still unavailable.
We urge all to follow the protocols, as this is a time we must all play our part in the protection of the nation’s welfare.
Together we will get through this crisis.