REGIONAL – Travellers get stuck in Barbados due to T&T Travel Pass site issues

Source: TT Guardian – What started off as a relaxing mini getaway in Barbados has ended with a major headache for one Trinidadian family.

The family, who spoke to Guardian Media under anonymity, said they have been trying to return home since Monday due to issues with the T&T Travel Pass website.

“Initially set out to return home on a 5.15 pm flight but at that time, the site for the TT Passport prerequisite forms were completely down. It was inaccessible. At brief moments it will come up but then it will crash again,” according to one family member.

Having not been able to complete the online form, the family said they were unable to board the flight and were told by the authorities there to touch base with the Immigration Division in T&T.

Another family member said, “We did get through to people in Immigration, but no one there seems to be willing or did not feel that they had the authority to make that call so at the end of the day we spent about five hours at the airport on Monday.”

The family said that they felt trapped in a virtual loop.

“To get on to a returning flight to Trinidad, you have to present a negative PCR in a 72-hour window before your flight. When you do that PCR test you have to wait and hope that within 24 to 48 hours you get the results,” they explained.

The family member added, “So now that we were denied on Monday when the site was down and we were told to come back on Thursday, we did a second set of PCR tests, waited for the results, attempted to get on to the site today, the sites have been glitching and so on again and then we hope to be able to get flights at the Caribbean Airlines counter and that they are not oversold [overbooked] because our information is that the flights are oversold [overbooked] by 20 per cent.”

Guardian Media understands that other families in Barbados and Canada have also been experiencing problems accessing the site.

However, contacted for a comment yesterday, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Stuart Young, said that as far as he is aware there have been no issues with the website.

“I have confirmed with the Ministry of Digital Transformation that the TT Travel Pass is not down. It is fully functional. I just went onto the site myself and it is working. There is a help desk that anyone who may be experiencing difficulty can access but the site is functioning,” he said.

Caribbean Airlines also said that it has not received any complaints from travellers about the issue.

Guardian Media also asked Young whether a plan is in place in the event the website crashes. However, no response was given up to press time.

Efforts to contact Minister of Digital Transformation, Hassel Bacchus, and Minister of National Security, Fitzgerald Hinds for an explanation proved futile.

Article by: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian