RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­spite tor­ren­tial rain­fall and a stern warn­ing from Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh not to con­gre­gate, thou­sands of peo­ple flocked to the beach­es and rivers across the coun­try yes­ter­day.

In South Trinidad, the pop­u­lar Car­rat Shed Beach in La Brea was filled with hun­dreds of peo­ple.
While the rains poured, scores of peo­ple stood un­der a shed at the beach­front. Most peo­ple wore no masks and did not prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing.

Randy Bal­lack, of Princes Town, said they de­cid­ed on the spur of the mo­ment to go to the beach af­ter hear­ing the new lock­down mea­sures an­nounced on Sat­ur­day.

“The last time we had to wait so long to come to the beach, so this morn­ing I and my wife and a few oth­ers from the fam­i­ly de­cid­ed to come here.”

Bal­lack did not wear a mask and when asked why he said he had one in the car.

“Re­al­ly, we should be wear­ing it but we have to eat and drink, so that’s why we are not wear­ing it now,” Bal­lack said.

David­son Smart, from the Re­vival Mis­sion Pen­te­costal Church in La Ro­maine, said they went to the beach to do bap­tisms. 

“We had five bap­tisms to do and a group of us came here,” Smart said.

A group of mo­tor­bike rid­ers were al­so on the beach and none of them wore masks.

Chil­dren played in the sand and many peo­ple were seen con­gre­gat­ing close to each oth­er, buy­ing snacks and oth­er items.

At Ves­signy Beach, life­guard Car­los Fer­ri­ar said more peo­ple were vis­it­ing the beach com­pared to a reg­u­lar Sun­day.

“This morn­ing we did not have a lot but to­wards the evening, much more peo­ple came. This is an evening beach. When the tide comes up, that is when peo­ple come,” he said.

Fer­ri­ar said most peo­ple did not abide with COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

Janelle Williams, a ven­dor at Ves­signy Beach, said she was wor­ried about her loss of in­come once the beach­es close.

“The last lock­down was ter­ri­ble for me. I was sell­ing from my house but af­ter a while peo­ple stopped com­ing,”  Williams said.

She added that she al­so nev­er got a grant for her loss of earn­ings.

“I ap­plied and I helped many peo­ple to fill ap­pli­ca­tions and I don’t know of any­one who got it,” she added.

Radol Poolc­hand, who went to the beach with his Venezue­lan girl­friend Miri­am Bo­liv­er and her two chil­dren, aged eight and three, said he had planned his beach lime long be­fore the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the COVID-19 re­stric­tions.
“I had promised to bring him and that’s why we came,” Poolchan said.

Rachael Pierre and her fam­i­ly, of Gas­par­il­lo, said they too had planned to vis­it the beach be­fore.

“We are wear­ing our masks and sani­tis­ing. We are tak­ing COVID, se­ri­ous­ly,” she said.
Po­lice said there were al­so crowds at the Quinam Beach as well as the beach­es in Ma­yaro and Guayagua­yare. 

How­ev­er, there was tragedy for one fam­i­ly at the Clifton Hill Beach in Point Fortin, where Dhan­raj Ram­nar­ine drowned. Ram­nar­ine was re­port­ed­ly at the beach cel­e­brat­ing his birth­day with fam­i­ly when he got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty while in the wa­ter. His body was re­moved to the San Fer­nan­do Mor­tu­ary.