Guyana’s Ambassador to Venezuela Dr Odeen Ishmael and a five-member team from the embassy last weekend in the Venezuelan industrial city of Ciudad Guayana assisted more than 200 Guyanese in renewing their passports and another 200 in applying for new and first-time passports.
Over the two-day consular outreach exercise, the team met with hundreds of Guyanese nationals residing in Ciudad Guayana, located at the junction of the Orinoco and the Caroni Rivers, 600 miles south-east of Caracas, the Guyana Embassy in Caracas said in a press release.
Most of the Guyanese who migrated to Venezuela reside in various parts of this sprawling industrial city.
In the two-day period the assistance with the passports was concentrated at four different centres in the city’s large municipalities of San Felix and Puerto Ordaz.
Many of the Guyanese in Ciudad Guayana are illegal residents and a sizeable proportion of them do not even possess Guyanese passports or even copies of their birth certificates which form the essential requirement for them to apply for passports, the release said.
Moreover, a great proportion of them are also without Guyanese identification documents, even though they have been living in Venezuela for as long as twenty years.
Therefore they cannot apply for Venezuelan residency which many of their compatriots with the relevant documents have already acquired.
Ambassador Ishmael in addressing the Guyanese nationals who turned out in large numbers at the four locations explained to them how they can acquire other documents such as copies of birth and marriage certificates, and also the process they have to follow to enable their children born in Venezuela to acquire Guyanese passports.
The release stated that according to the city authorities of Ciudad Guayana, more than 36,000 Guyanese reside there with the largest concentration in the municipality of San Felix. While some have found employment in the city’s iron, steel and aluminium industries, most of the ‘illegals’ are employed as labourers, domestics and ice-cream vendors.
However, some others are self-employed mainly in the transportation business and in operating small farms, groceries and small stores.
The release said that at a lengthy meeting last Saturday with Mayor of the city, Clemente Scotto, Ambassador Ishmael discussed the problems of the Guyanese nationals and sought the city government’s assistance in helping to more rapidly incorporate the Guyanese community into the general Venezuelan society.
And Ishmael reminded the mayor that many Guyanese children, owing to their non-possession of Guyanese birth certificates, face problems in obtaining admission to schools.
The mayor told Guyana’s ambassador that he was aware of this particular problem and it was currently being addressed.
He said also that the Guyanese, because of their language and religions, tend to form a closed community and generally they would not participate in civic programmes organized by the city authorities.
However, Mayor Scotto said that he noticed a positive shift in February when a representative organization of the Guyanese in the city organized a food fair to mark Guyana’s republic anniversary and the general public was invited.
Meanwhile, the ambassador and the mayor also discussed problems associated with employment of Guyanese in the area. In this regard, the mayor noted that many employers exploit the ‘illegal’ Guyanese who are forced to accept menial wages for long hours of work. Moreover, he expressed concern over the perceived movement of criminals, the contraband trade, and drug and arms trafficking across the Guyana-Venezuela border, a situation which he said has also resulted in a higher level of money laundering in his city.
During the ambassador’s meetings with the Guyanese nationals he informed them of the discussions he held with Mayor Scotto and urged them to make greater efforts to incorporate themselves in the affairs of the wider community in which they are now an essential part, the release added.
