Fol­low­ing re­ports that Venezue­lans were liv­ing in squalor on the Ica­cos beach, cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, Gary Aboud is re­new­ing his call to close the bor­der.

Aboud said the Venezue­lan cri­sis in Trinidad may get worse if the bor­der wass not closed and if more was not done to al­le­vi­ate a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

“What FFOS had feared has come to pass. Many times FFOS called on Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to close our bor­ders and reg­u­late the num­ber of refugees en­ter­ing. Let’s face it, our col­laps­ing econ­o­my has lim­it­ed re­sources and our Gov­ern­ment has not es­tab­lished any so­cial pro­grammes to as­sist these refugees. The re­sult is that they are liv­ing in squalor,” he said.

Aboud added, “It is our du­ty as hu­man be­ings to as­sist the Venezue­lan refugees who are al­ready here but can our Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young please ad­vise us when the free flow of un­reg­u­lat­ed refugees will be stopped?”

He said af­ter the “much-tout­ed amnesty, T&T’s mar­itime bor­ders are still wide open. We reg­u­lar­ly re­ceive new re­ports of boat­loads ar­riv­ing un­der the cov­er of night.”

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment has failed to im­ple­ment work­able mea­sures to al­le­vi­ate this hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, Aboud said, “Not on­ly are starv­ing moth­ers and chil­dren com­ing in but every type of crim­i­nal and con­tra­band, in­clud­ing weapons and sub­stances, con­tin­ue to flow freely in­to our threat­ened is­lands.”

He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to fail to pro­tect na­tion­al bor­ders.

“Un­less there are less talk and more ac­tion, every cit­i­zen will be forced to pay a price for the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure,” he said.

Over the week­end, Ica­cos res­i­dents said sev­er­al Venezue­lan fam­i­lies in­clud­ing chil­dren were liv­ing in a shack near Ica­cos Beach. They were be­ing giv­en food and cloth­ing from res­i­dents.

Ear­li­er this year, there were al­so re­ports of Venezue­lans liv­ing in the forests and feed­ing off fruits. Sev­er­al fam­i­lies have been adopt­ed by Trinidad fam­i­lies but Ica­cos res­i­dents say if the bor­ders re­main open, lo­cal res­i­dents will be un­able to cope with the in­flux of Venezue­lans com­ing in­to T&T.