In another public condemnation of what she sees as government’s failure to speedily repatriate Trinidad and Tobago nationals from across the world, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar compared government’t handling of the situation to slavery and indentureship, ranking it “worse” than both periods in history.

She made the comment while speaking at a United National Congress virtual political meeting on Thursday night. 

“Never in this history of our nation has one leader acted so callously, acted without compassion and with contempt towards the hard-working citizens of our nation,” Persad-Bissessar said, telling supporters “Look at how callously they have treated our citizens stranded abroad. For the past weeks, they kept trying to incite fear – they kept saying Kamla wants to open the borders and bring COVID and if that happens people will start dropping like flies”.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley estimated some 10,000 nationals had applied for exemptions to return to T&T given the closure of borders in late March. 

“You cannot abandon over 10,000 citizens of your country- you cannot do that. That is is worse than, I think, slavery and indentureship”  Persad-Bissessar lamented. 

The comment was not included in the printed version of the Opposition Leader’ speech, which was disseminated to the media and later posted on her official Facebook page.