The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) yesterday reiterated that it believes that there is a massive people smuggling racket and inaction by the government cannot be the order of the day.
It noted that this is an issue that was raised a year ago at a parliamentary committee and the APNU+AFC Coalition has refused to address it.
In its edition of June 30, 2019 the Sunday Stabroek reported on an investigation where Haitians were being transported to the Brazil border via the road to Lethem. The operation appeared to be well organized and involving drivers and enforcers. Bribes were also paid to the police along the way. The people smuggling ring is also said to involve Cubans who come here in large numbers.
https://www.stabroeknews.com/2019/news/guyana/06/30/cops-under-investigation-for-taking-bribes-from-haitians-being-smuggled-to-brazil/
Despite the mounting evidence, the Minister of Citizenship, Winston Felix and the law enforcement authorities have not investigated, appearing instead to prefer turning a blind eye to the trafficking of thousands of Haitians and others through the country’s porous borders.
The PPP in a statement yesterday said that alarming statistics on the number of Cubans, as well as Haitians who cannot be accounted for, since entering Guyana, caused the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, in 2018, to summon Minister Felix and then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, on June 13, 2018 to answer questions with regards to possible human trafficking. The PPP statement noted that the Parliamentary Committee examined statistics provided by Minister Felix himself for the period 2015 to April 30, 2018. The immigration figures showed that a total of 93,374 Cubans arrived in Guyana, but only 76,663 were recorded to have left. This meant that 16,711 Cubans were unaccounted for and probably still in Guyana. With regards to the Haitians, for the same period, a total of 6,245 arrived in Guyana, but only 963 were recorded to have left. Again like the Cubans, a large number of 5,282 Haitians were also unaccounted for.
The PPP noted that in 2018, Felix denied, before the Parliamentary Committee and media, that there was any truth to the information publicly stated by the Opposition Leader that Haitians were being given preferential treatment airside on arrival with special facilitators.
“He refused to check the CCTV cameras at the airport and told the Opposition Parliamentarians to bring the evidence. Needless to say, the recent media reports have exposed the untruth in Minister Felix’s comments.
“Further, the Party is primarily worried that these foreign nationals are being issued with Guyanese documents, which would allow them to be registered as eligible Guyanese voters in the ongoing house-to-house registration being done by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM)”, the PPP said.
It added that the Party’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo, has repeatedly raised this issue of people smuggling over the past year, while the local media corps has advanced its investigative reporting on the issue this week. Curiously, APNU+AFC Coalition officials have remained silent on the issues of concern, the PPP added.
The PPP called on the Immigration Department and the General Registrar’s Office to “come clean” on the worrying state of affairs.
The PPP queried Felix’s refusal to investigate this matter. “One may wonder why this Minister is so vociferous in denying this racket, which is so patently obvious. The PPP is not convinced that the Minister is so obtuse…Minister Felix must be held accountable for what is happening”.
The party also called on President David Granger to “abandon his usual posture of silence in the face of the scandals embroiling his Administration and address this matter with urgency”.