Stu­dents and na­tion­als who have been stuck out­side T&T since the coun­try closed its bor­ders in March to con­tain the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic may get an ear­ly Christ­mas gift in the form of an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home.

Bear­ing the good news was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, as he spoke at Sat­ur­day’s press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, about the mea­sures his min­istry in­tend­ed to take to bring T&T cit­i­zens home be­fore the Yule­tide sea­son.

From No­vem­ber 15, Young said they will in­tro­duce guide­lines con­cern­ing repa­tri­at­ing peo­ple to T&T.

Young said as of No­vem­ber 6, the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als who had ap­plied to en­ter T&T stood at 13,042, while 7,204 peo­ple had been grant­ed ex­emp­tions since the bor­ders were closed.

“So that leaves cur­rent­ly 5,838 out­stand­ing ap­pli­ca­tions to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said when he looked at the num­ber of peo­ple who had ap­plied to en­ter T&T at the end of Ju­ly and the fig­ure was 5,539.

Young said T&T na­tion­als who may have been domi­ciled out­side may have joined the queue to re­turn home.

He said these in­di­vid­u­als added to the 13,042 peo­ple want­i­ng to en­ter T&T's bor­ders.

He said these peo­ple are “all of our flights that have been leav­ing T&T since we have been re­sumed on a week­ly ba­sis…on a ten day ba­sis…we have flights go­ing every ten days to Bar­ba­dos, New York, Mi­a­mi, Cana­da and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

Young said, “...we are now con­scious of those per­sons who…I don’t know how to put it...but jump on those flights to leave and they ex­pect to then im­me­di­ate­ly turn around when they fin­ish their busi­ness out­side and join and some­times de­mand they jump the queue to get back in­to Trinidad ahead of those who were stuck out­side.”

Young said this was some­thing they have been fight­ing against.

Young said more flights will be put in place to bring those in­di­vid­u­als back home in the com­ing weeks.

In­di­vid­u­als want­i­ng to re­turn home will be re­quired to have a neg­a­tive PCR test 72 hours be­fore en­try, while the trav­el ex­emp­tions sys­tem will re­main in place.

Up­on en­ter­ing our shores, the per­son will be put in state quar­an­tine or state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties for sev­en days.

“We will test per­sons who have en­tered with their neg­a­tive PCR test on the sixth day of be­ing here. And once you present your sec­ond neg­a­tive on the sixth day when we test you…you will be re­leased and you can go home.”

Young said this repa­tri­a­tion process will de­pend on the quar­an­tine space avail­able.

“We have agreed to in­tro­duce an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty as a state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty. We have al­ready start­ed the prepa­ra­tions…had a con­ver­sa­tion with them yes­ter­day and the Min­istry of Health is on it to­day. This is the Kapok Ho­tel.”

The ho­tel will pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al 100 rooms, Young said.

“What I am ask­ing, Prime Min­is­ter, is the per­sons who may be for­tu­nate enough to get in­to the queue to come home for Christ­mas…we are go­ing to be ask­ing as many of them as pos­si­ble to utilise the state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine. In oth­er words, pay for the ho­tel fa­cil­i­ties for your sev­en days on ar­rival be­cause it in­creas­es the amount of per­sons we can man­age in our quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.”

In ad­di­tion to Kapok, the State has been us­ing Chan­cel­lor, Re­gent Star and Cas­ca­dia Ho­tels as quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties.