The leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the Gov­ern­ment to come up with a plan by next week for cit­i­zens to re­turn to work and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

In a press re­lease fol­low­ing Row­ley’s ad­dress yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said "Row­ley made an an­nounce­ment of con­tin­ued lock­down with­out any con­cern for non-es­sen­tial work­ers who have no in­come, can­not pay rent, can­not feed their fam­i­lies, can­not pay their loans, have de­plet­ed their sav­ings, and who are strug­gling in so many oth­er ways.

"Hun­dreds of thou­sands of cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to suf­fer from the harsh ef­fects of the lock­down with­out an ac­com­pa­ny­ing plan. Hard­ly a minute pass­es by with­out a cit­i­zen reach­ing out to us to ask for food sup­plies as they have been with­out in­come for five weeks.

"While Row­ley and his team con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in a vac­u­um, cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to suf­fer the ef­fects of his failed lead­er­ship in the re­al world. Ab­sent from the Prime Min­isan’s press con­fer­ence to­day was an an­nounce­ment of re­lief for the poor, un­em­ployed and vul­ner­a­ble."

She said that af­ter fail­ing to act prompt­ly in procur­ing vac­cines for the pop­u­la­tion, Row­ley had rewrit­ten his­to­ry to ex­cuse him­self for his in­com­pe­tence in putting the coun­try in this ter­ri­ble place.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said he had tak­en one pan­dem­ic and turned it in­to two; the coun­try now had a COVID-19 and an eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter.

She said that it was even more in­sult­ing that Row­ley and the dis­cred­it­ed Min­istry of Health pro­pa­gan­da team had al­so bold faced­ly told the pop­u­la­tion that they could have been "fac­ing 100 deaths a day." Per­sad-Bisses­sar la­belled it as a pa­thet­ic at­tempt to try to make the coun­try's peo­ple feel a false sense of grat­i­tude to this failed team that had been in charge for 15 months.

She list­ed a se­ries of al­ter­na­tive: to act ear­ly from Jan­u­ary 2020 in­stead of the CMO Roshan Paras­ram say­ing that COVID-19 would not af­fect cit­i­zens here

*To do every­thing in their pow­er so that they could get vac­cines in Feb­ru­ary 2021, like Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, An­tigua, Guyana and oth­er pro-ac­tive coun­tries, in­stead of call­ing them beg­gars

*To al­low the pri­vate sec­tor to im­port vac­cines, in­stead of chastis­ing them

*To set up a sys­tem to as­sist small busi­ness­es, de­fer loans, and as­sist so-called non-es­sen­tial work­ers, in­stead of leav­ing them to fend for them­selves in an un­car­ing and in­ef­fi­cient sys­tem

*To be like T&T's Caribbean neigh­bours who were open­ing up now, or like the US, UK and oth­ers are open­ing up as well

*To have com­pe­tent and le­gal man­age­ment of the na­tion's health care in­sti­tu­tions dur­ing the worst health cri­sis in its his­to­ry, in­stead of hav­ing a play­wright and PNM par­ty hack as CEO of the NCRHA

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the on­ly sen­si­ble thing the Prime Min­is­ter had said was that ba­si­cal­ly, his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was an id­iot.