Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is hold­ing out hope that his daugh­ter Dr Sonel Row­ley-Stew­art will be among those na­tion­als who will be al­lowed to re­turn to T&T dur­ing this hol­i­day pe­ri­od.

Con­firm­ing his long­ing as a fa­ther, Row­ley said his daugh­ter had al­ready ap­plied for an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home from the US and was in the process of ful­fill­ing the re­main­ing re­quire­ments.

Speak­ing dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, the prime min­is­ter said while it was his wish to have her spend the Christ­mas hol­i­day with the fam­i­ly, he joked that it was in the hands of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as part of the na­tion­al process.

Pro­vid­ing an up­date on the thou­sands of ex­emp­tions that had been re­ceived from peo­ple want­i­ng to re-en­ter T&T as well as leave T&T, Young said as at De­cem­ber 4 a to­tal of 15,471 ap­pli­ca­tions had been re­ceived from peo­ple de­sirous of re­turn­ing home. From No­vem­ber 20 to De­cem­ber 4 a to­tal of 1,549 ap­pli­ca­tions had been re­ceived from this cat­e­go­ry.

Ex­emp­tions grant­ed to peo­ple to re-en­ter T&T up to De­cem­ber 4 stood at 8,500.

Hav­ing in­creased repa­tri­a­tions with­in the last few weeks, Young said ad­di­tion­al flights had been added to var­i­ous routes.

Con­firm­ing they had now reached max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty at state-su­per­vised fa­cil­i­ties/ho­tels yes­ter­day, Young said spe­cial arrange­ments were be­ing made to bring home sea­son­al work­ers who had gone to Cana­da.

He said one batch of work­ers had al­ready re­turned to T&T, while dis­cus­sions were un­der­way with the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties on how this could be fur­ther fa­cil­i­tat­ed.

Ex­ten­sion for Venezue­lans grant­ed amnesty

Young has said al­though the ex­tend­ed reg­is­tra­tion of the 16,000 plus Venezue­lan mi­grants who had been grant­ed amnesty would ex­pire on De­cem­ber 31, dis­cus­sions have al­ready tak­en place at the lev­el of the Cab­i­net to ex­tend it fur­ther.

He said while no de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sions has been tak­en, it was most like­ly that reg­is­tered mi­grants would be asked to fill out new forms and up­date their in­for­ma­tion pro­files in an at­tempt to en­sure their con­tin­ued res­i­den­cy. Young said no new reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cis­es would be held.