With several Venezuelan immigrants now working in various jobs around the city, Citizenship Minister Winston Felix has warned that hiring them is illegal if they are not in possession of work permits.
Felix is urging such persons to immediately visit his ministry to rectify their work status and to ensure they are documented if they have not done so already.
“Come in and upgrade your status so that it would not be difficult to deal with the application for work permit,” he urged during an interview with Sunday Stabroek, before acknowledging that fears of deportation may prevent such persons from coming forward.
“There is that fear but in the current relationship we have with the international organisations for migrant Venezuelans, they are not being sent back because in their peculiar situation we have agreed not to return them to Venezuela in its current state,” he assured.
Among the jobs being performed by some Venezuelan nationals around Georgetown are garbage collection and the sale of food. There are also reports of Spanish-speaking foreign nationals working as food delivery men.
Immigrant Spanish speakers are also now employed in many stores along Regent Street and in adjacent streets in Georgetown as shop owners are seeking to attract Cubans who come to Guyana in droves to shop. Some have even resorted to putting up signs and quoting prices in Spanish to make it easier to communicate with such shoppers.
Felix explained that persons or businesses who want to employ a foreign national, whether a Venezuelan, Cuban or of another nationality, has to apply and get a work permit for the prospective employee.
He said once they get the work permit, the person will be entitled to work in Guyana legally. “Some people come in after the fact and we have been regularising those whose situation may need such a treatment and having regularised them they can then pursue the application for work permit. My thing is that there are many who might be employed at lower levels without the work permit and that is a matter we are pursuing to discover who they are and to get them regularised,” he said.
Felix said recently his ministry amended the work permit form to make it multilingual, with English on one side and the Spanish equivalent on the other side. “That was only done this [last] week and this is to enable them to read the form in Spanish and fill it out,” he said.
According to him, there are no problems with the Cubans who have been coming to Guyana for a long time as they come legally and they go back to their country of origin.
However, he noted that it is difficult to estimate the number of registered Vene-zuelan migrants as they are crossing over the border into the Guyana more frequently. The last figure given was 5,123 in February.
‘Proper accommodation’
According to Felix, quite a number of the migrants have been registered and quite a number are not registered. “When we find them, we take them to Ministry of Health for screening and having done that they are released. So its registration then screening for health,” he said.
Further, he noted that the migrants when they cross the border are seeking to get into Georgetown. He stressed that government’s arrangement never intended that Venezuelans who came across through the borders in regions One and Seven should enter Georgetown and “that is one issue we have to address.”
Felix insisted that the migrants ought to remain in those areas, particularly those who do not have any connections in Georgetown, such as relatives. “They should remain there but there are some slippages and they are entering Georgetown and we would address that,” he added.
The issue now, he said, is that there is an accumulation of Venezuelans immigrants and, therefore, a “proper” place for them has to be found. The old National Service Training Centre, close to Matthews Ridge in Region One, has been identified, Felix pointed out, while noting that a committee has been formed to manage the reorganisation of the migrant population there.
Asked how soon the centre will be ready to start accommodating migrants, he said timelines will be worked out when the committee starts meeting. “It is nice to talk timelines but there are a number of variables that interfere with time lines” he noted.
Meanwhile, in providing an update on the large groups of migrants who travelled by boat to the city earlier this month, Felix told Sunday Stabroek that about 30 of them are still in the custody of law enforcement officials as no one has come forward to vouch for them. “…We are seeking to have in collaboration with the international community an arrangement to provide alternative accommodation for them,” he said.
Felix could not comment on the circumstances which led to the large group travelling to the city but said that from all indications it would appear that they came on their own.
The migrants arrived in Georgetown around 5 am on March 20th on the MV Barima, which had departed Kumaka in Region One the day before. They were subsequently documented, immunised and taken to the Guyana Police Force’s Headquarters, Eve Leary.
Felix said that 92 of the migrants were either Guyanese, or their descendants and their spouses and as a result relatives came and vouched for them and they were released into the care and custody of those persons. He said that other persons vouched for some of those remaining and about 30 persons were left.
“We are seeking to source… long-term arrangements for them in terms of accommodation… but so far we are in control of the situation. We have assistance from the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and IOM [Inter-national Organization for Migration] and we are managing the situation with their support,” Felix had said in a statement which was released on the day the group arrived in the city.
A multi-agency coordinating committee, which meets regularly, is working alongside the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the IOM and UNHRC to determine areas of collaboration and support of the Venezuelans.
