By Prior Beharry
A new online system is in place to facilitate entry of people into Trinidad and Tobago as borders open on Saturday.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, T&T borders were closes since late March 2020.
The new system called TTravelPass was unveiled at a press conference held at the Ministry of Works and Transport in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday.
Present at the conference were Minister of Energy and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young; Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds; Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan; and Minister of Digital Transformation Hassel Bacchus.
A negative PCR test is required 72 hours before anyone wants to travel into T&T and all the necessary information must be uploaded to https://ttravelpass.gov.tt/travel-requirement.
Young described it as a “robust platform.”
Those allowed to enter T&T are:
- Vaccinated non-nationals,
- Vaccinated nationals; and
- Unvaccinated nationals.
Unvaccinated non-nationals are not allowed in at this stage.
Unvaccinated nationals will only be allowed through the Piarco International Airport and be quarantined for 14 days at a state-supervised facility.
Vaccinated nationals can enter either through Trinidad or Tobago.
All information must be filled out on the site and a person is considered fully vaccinated after the requisite number of doses of a World Health Organization-approved vaccine.
The information travellers will have to upload included vaccination information, place of quarantine where applicable, flight number and a negative PCR test.
Young said anyone presenting false information will be fined $350,000 and face six months in prison according to laws recently passed in Parliament.
Asked if the TTravelPass website could crash just like the Ministry of Education platform for online learning did when it went live, Young said they have done all that they can to prevent this.
He said, “We built a very robust platform. We have done all that we can. We are satisfied, but you can never predict what can happen.
“Part of the whole process of digitisation is you have systems in place. We’re hoping that there are no issues.”
Young said the site was a “milestone in the management of the pandemic.”
Young said there will also be a call-in centre, administered by TSTT, to help those who needed assistance.
He said the centre will operate from 8am to 4pm daily.
When a person enters T&T after 17th July 2021, and needs to return to the U.S.A. they need to show a negative PCR test less than 72 hours old. Where in Trinidad and Tobago can this test be done for visitors and at what cost?
It is said that vaccinated people can still get and pass on the virus and maybe asymptomatic.
Yet vaccinated people who have travel through a whole host of situations are allowed to go straight into society with no self isolation nor quarantine.
Is the best way to keep out the variants?