Governance
Borders close at midnight, and nationals abroad are told to wait
Trinidad and Tobago shut its borders to everyone, citizens included. No published procedure yet exists for those left outside.
From midnight tonight, no one may enter Trinidad and Tobago by air or sea. The closure announced by Prime Minister Keith Rowley applies to citizens as well as visitors, ten days after the Ministry of Health confirmed the country's first case of Covid-19 on 12 March.
Public health grounds for a closure are strong, and the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on 11 March. The difficulty is the order of events. The border was shut first, and the rules for students, patients, seafarers and workers caught overseas are still to come.
The Constitution protects a citizen's freedom of movement, subject to laws that are reasonably justifiable in an emergency. That test is about procedure as much as purpose: who may apply to return, on what criteria, and who decides.
Until those criteria are published, return depends on discretion. Nationals abroad are entitled to know the rules before they are asked to follow them.
Sources
Independent reporting by Pearce Robinson. Corrections and responses may be submitted here.
