Georgetown: Guyana will be instituting a system that will require visas to be issued to Haitians who are interested in visiting the country as investigations continue into human trafficking and people smuggling.
This is according to Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn on the sidelines of the launch of the National Road Safety Week 2020 on Monday.
The Minister explained that visas will be granted to Haitians visiting to conduct legitimate and proper business in Guyana.
Records, he said reveled that there are 33,000 Haitians who came to Guyana over the past three years and those persons are currently missing.
“We know they are not in Guyana, we know of many reports of them going over the Corentyne River perhaps to French Guiana, we know that many of them are said to be going to Brazil, we understand and we believe that there is a strong element of Human Trafficking and people smuggling related to this matter,” he said.
Benn noted that he had refused the landing of a chartered flight from the Dominican Republic which consisted of all Haitians.
“It appears that after that refusal, there have been attempts to come through Barbados on smaller planes on Caribbean airline to come to Guyana and to continue what we view as trafficking in people. The very day that they arrived the hotels that they came to were switched, they switched accommodations, went to places where they joined minibuses under the surveillance of police, unknown to them and they took off on the Mabura trail,” the Home Affairs Minister explained.
Currently, the persons in custody includes seven children and it appears as if they children have no relations to the persons they were travelling with and investigations are ongoing and they will be returned to their homeland.
“We cannot continue with a situation where a number amounting to five percent of our population passes through the country in a few years and disappear, there are international implications and other legal issues relating to this matter which we have to abide to and we are working to get this resolved soon,” he said
A number of Haitian nationals held in a people smuggling probe are currently being accommodated at a shelter and they are expected to be deported.
You must be logged in to post a comment.