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Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has promised to monitor the Windrush issue to help T&T citizens living in England who are affected.
He made the comment yesterday after revealing he discovered there were “people from T&T who were actually deported from Britain” while attending the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
On Monday, Rowley said he met with one affected person who was grateful for the assistance she received from T&T’s mission in London when the issue became an international embarrassment.
“Actually, there was one person there who had been through the whole system ... was deemed to be illegal, sent home. Actually, it happened when she tried to renew her passport … was put out of Britain.”
The woman, Rowley said, got the deportation decision reversed and was in London to tell her story and experience of the Windrush scandal while he was there.
The Windrush scandal arose after several international reports unmasked that British citizens from the Windrush generation, many of them elderly Caribbean people, were facing deportation after being invited by the British government to the UK some 70 years ago.
Rowley said the bulk of the Caribbean people affected came from Jamaica and Barbados, with a number of citizens from T&T.
The PM said they had been given a commitment from Britain that the matter will be dealt with “right up to the level of compensation” to those affected.
Some of these citizens, Rowley said were unable to get jobs and access medical attention.
“The British Prime Minister has publicly stated in Parliament that such citizens will be identified and not mistreated.”
While arrangements have been put in place, Rowley said the T&T Government would monitor the situation closely.
Asked how many T&T nationals would have been affected, Rowley could not say, but said the numbers deported were quite small.
“We don’t have a figure but what we do know, is that, there are probably hundreds of people who are affected. The affect is so widespread that is not just the individual themselves, it is their families. It is a much larger problem.”