Former President David Granger has warned that the influx of Venezuelan migrants, especially in the Barima-Waini Region, is posing serious demographic, economic and strategic challenges to Guyana.
Appearing on his weekly Friday programme – The Public Interest – Granger, according to the PNCR, said that the estimated 36,000 Venezuelan migrants in the country as a whole outnumber Guyanese residents in Region No. 1 whose population is only 26, 000.
“He explained that the migration problem has become a headache for officials, noting that Guyana shares a thinly-populated, 800 km border with Venezuela which has been a zone of banditry, crime, incursions, occupation, overflights and harassment”, a release from the PNCR said.
Granger bemoaned the PPP/C administration’s decision to dismantle the Department of Citizenship which he said was established in 2015 to manage migration from Venezuela.
The former President believes that the PPP/C administration adopted a markedly different approach to dealing with Venezuelan migrants compared to the treatment meted out to Haitian migrants.
“He pointed, specifically, to the creation of a small unit within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, official visits to Anna Regina in Region No. 2 and the grant of generous concessions, including the waiver of customs duties, to re-migrants”, the release said.
Granger said that the PPP administration should explain, publicly, how it intends to manage the mounting agricultural, educational, occupational, cultural, health, housing and legal problems which such migration spawned.
