Gail Alexan­der

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Home of Foot­ball fa­cil­i­ty in Cou­va, which was of­fered to Gov­ern­ment to house re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients, is ex­pect­ed to be ready in a cou­ple of weeks.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, who spoke on the de­vel­op­ment at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, said Gov­ern­ment had ac­cept­ed the of­fer, which was made at no cost to the state.

The build­ing was shut down by then new­ly-ap­point­ed TTFA pres­i­dent Williams Wal­lace soon af­ter be­ing com­mis­sioned last No­vem­ber. Wal­lace was quot­ed back then as say­ing there were pend­ing ap­provals and al­so no prop­er­ty in­sur­ance for the mil­lion-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty. Row­ley was among those who’d at­tend­ed the build­ing’s launch pri­or to the clo­sure.

Speak­ing about the is­sue of stan­dards of care of­fered to peo­ple re­quired to be quar­an­tined yes­ter­day, Row­ley added, “In T&T, our de­fault po­si­tion is to take the line that some­thing’s bad. You don’t nor­mal­ly say it’s good.”

He said Gov­ern­ment was do­ing well in pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for peo­ple who need this.

“We’re look­ing for ac­com­mo­da­tion of good stan­dard. I know not all will agree the ac­com­mo­da­tion is up to every­body’s tastes, as some may have dif­fer­ent tastes.”

In the event such (quar­an­tine) rooms are re­quired, he said the Home of Foot­ball was be­ing of­fered. Gov­ern­ment and FI­FA had an arrange­ment for this lo­ca­tion where­by Gov­ern­ment was ap­proached by the world foot­ball body for pub­lic land for the struc­ture and FI­FA made fund­ing avail­able for its con­struc­tion.

De­scrib­ing the struc­ture as ex­cel­lent, Row­ley said it can hold up to 72 peo­ple.

“This is as good as any ac­com­mo­da­tion as you can get in T&T,” he said.

Row­ley said a few things still have to be done to the build­ing in or­der for it to house pa­tients. How­ev­er, he said the pri­vate sec­tor has come for­ward to do the out­fit­ting to make it com­fort­able and sup­ply ap­pli­ances et cetera.

“I’m hap­py peo­ple are chip­ping in this way,” he added.

Mean­while, on the is­sue of more T&T na­tion­als want­i­ng to come home, Row­ley said there were many out­side, hope­ful­ly shel­ter­ing in place. But he re­it­er­at­ed that if T&T’s doors weren’t closed at this time, the best-laid plans against the virus could come un­done.

“I un­der­stand the pain of sep­a­ra­tion, of not be­ing home. When I spent my first year on cam­pus (over­seas), for Christ­mas, I made sure my door was locked and I cried the whole day,” the PM said.

“I know the feel­ing of watch­ing TV and see­ing coffins in New York be­ing cov­ered tem­porar­i­ly to cope with the death rate. I know my daugh­ter is (in New York ) and I feel that every morn­ing and night. I’ve been to a fu­ner­al to see my favourite broth­er buried – so when peo­ple seek­ing of­fice say Gov­ern­ment doesn’t care I take that as par for the course for those who on the wrong course.”

Row­ley al­so hit crit­ics who’ve said Gov­ern­ment was “hid­ing” in­for­ma­tion on the cri­sis. He said it was the same peo­ple who claimed peo­ple had drowned in the 2018 Green­vale flood­ing and made oth­er wrong ac­cu­sa­tions. He said the same peo­ple were al­so pass­ing a slur on hard­work­ing health work­ers – whom he thanked – when those peo­ple said in­for­ma­tion Gov­ern­ment was giv­ing on the is­sue was un­true.