Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Some 40 of 49 Trinida­di­an na­tion­als work­ing aboard Dis­ney Cruise Lines are beg­ging Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young to con­sid­er their re­quest to re­turn home.

Guardian Me­dia was told yes­ter­day that the group has been work­ing aboard the Dis­ney Mag­ic and Dis­ney Dream for close to five months and are near­ing the end of their con­tract with no clear plan on what will hap­pen next due to the COVID-19 lock­down of bor­ders.

The work­ers are cur­rent­ly aboard the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy, which is be­ing used by the cruise line com­pa­ny to make a jour­ney through var­i­ous Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries to re­turn crew mem­bers to their home­lands.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Dis­ney’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Ma­rine Op­er­a­tions Rus­sel Daya has writ­ten to Young seek­ing clear­ance to bring the na­tion­als back to T&T. How­ev­er, they have not re­ceived a re­sponse yet.

A 40-year-old Trinida­di­an moth­er who has been work­ing on the Dis­ney Cruise Line for 18 years told Guardian Me­dia her four-month con­tract, like those of many oth­ers, comes to an end on May 29. The woman, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said, “The cap­tain thought since we are on our way to Grena­da to drop off crew mem­bers, Trinidad would have been able to ac­cept us and then we will come home.”

She said all pas­sen­gers dis­em­barked from the ship on March 14, and none of the three ships which were in op­er­a­tion then had any cas­es of COVID-19. All crew mem­bers, the woman stat­ed, are be­ing test­ed fre­quent­ly for the virus, while the com­pa­ny has ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al safe­ty pro­to­cols in­clud­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing.

Not­ing the pub­lic back­lash which oc­curred when a group of Tri­ni na­tion­als who had gone on a cruise made their ap­peal to come home, she said, “I un­der­stand the height of the Gov­ern­ment keep­ing the coun­try safe at this point in time. How­ev­er, we are safe and COVID-19 free and the com­pa­ny is mak­ing 99 per cent of the ef­fort.”

Guardian Me­dia was told gov­ern­ments from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and St Lu­cia gave the green light to have their cit­i­zens who were work­ing with the com­pa­ny repa­tri­at­ed but the T&T and Ja­maica gov­ern­ment were yet to give such ap­provals.

The Fan­ta­sy is ex­pect­ed to dock in St Vin­cent on May 20 and will then head to St Lu­cia for an­oth­er drop-off.

The Trinida­di­an crew mem­ber said if the T&T Gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to give clear­ance for their re­turn then, they will have no choice but to stay on the ship and re­turn to Or­lan­do where she and the oth­ers will have to fend for them­selves. How­ev­er, she said the group is cling­ing on to the hope that they will be re­unit­ed with their fam­i­lies in Trinidad.

“My nine-year-old daugh­ter is con­tact­ing me every day ask­ing me when I am com­ing home,” she lament­ed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Young via What­sApp for com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day but al­though he read the mes­sages he had not re­spond­ed to any of our ques­tions up to last evening.