Government will not take lightly any court action from, or on behalf of,  the 35 elderly Trinidad and Tobago nationals who are under mandatory quarantine in Barbados at Sugar Cane Club, St Peter, staying at their own expense. “The threat of court action means nothing when you allow persons to break borders and infect the rest of TT,” National Security Minister Stuart Young said on Wednesday morning. “If the court makes an order and if people are allowed in it would be the end of the protection which the government has put in place and would defeat, completely, the closure of our borders. “The government or the population will not take it lightly,” he advanced. “They left after our borders were closed and made their way to Barbados traveling from South Africa to Oman, Oman to London, and London to Barbados.

  On Monday when the group arrived in Barbados , the island’s Attorney General Dale Marshall   said  that while Bridgetown has no legal responsibility to accept nationals but its own, it could not abandon them because they had little to no options.

“The Government of Trinidad took the decision that they did not intend to accept them and we reached out to the Government of Trinidad and Tobago during the day to urge that they take their citizens but the fact of the matter is that they declined to do so,” Marshall told CBC News Barbados in an interview.

 Here in Port of Spain on Wednesday, National Security Minister Stuart Young  insisted “every country has limited bed space. We have to flatten the curve and keep it as flat as we can,” justifying his adamant position against airlifting the T&T Nationals home as  legal action is being threatened in some quarters. But he did not rule out their return after 14 days mandatory quarantine in Barbados. “We continue to have conversations with Barbados and  if after 14 days they are not tested positive and they come to Trinidad they will still be put into quarantine by the State,’ Young explained. “ It cannot be a loophole that we accept that persons make their way from wherever they are in the world .The  government is resolute that it will do all that it can and will continue to protect the population that is here,” the Minister said. “So far all of our exposure has been from people returning from abroad hence the reason to close  the border in a very short time frame. ‘It is dramatic and dangerous when CARICOM countries still allow international travel and then they come through here. ‘As for the persons in Suriname… Suriname airways was unable to bring flight on Sunday before we closed the borders because they had no crew to bring the plane. Photos from Barbados Today Newspaper show the convoy taking the group of Trinidadians to Quarantine.