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Monday, February 17, 2025

Asylum seeker happy as he gets food badge

by

Loyse Vincent
2081 days ago
20190607
Aubrey Henderson Food Badge

Aubrey Henderson Food Badge

Au­drey Hen­der­son, a Venezue­lan asy­lum seek­er, who com­plet­ed the Gov­ern­ment's amnesty reg­is­tra­tion process on May 31, re­ceived his food badge from the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) ear­li­er this week.

Hen­der­son, who ar­rived in To­ba­go il­le­gal­ly just over 18 months, left the THRA's Scar­bor­ough cen­tre "re­lieved."

“I am re­lieved. I sell sno-cones and cot­ton can­dy on the beach and al­though I pre­vi­ous­ly ap­plied for a food badge I was told I could not get one be­cause I was didn’t have a work per­mit," he said.

"I am glad I reg­is­tered as the reg­is­tra­tion process re­al­ly gives me a chance to earn mon­ey so that I can take care of my fam­i­ly in To­ba­go and in Venezuela. I can now do my busi­ness with­out fear.”

Mean­while, Venezue­lan fa­ther and son Miguel and Juan Or­tiz hope Gov­ern­ment's amnesty will as­sist in many oth­er ways.

The fa­ther, Juan, saw the reg­is­tra­tion as a "good thing" and hopes it will re­duce the ex­ploita­tion of mi­grant work­ers.

“Some­times peo­ple ap­proach and ask us to work for them. My son and I do the job, some­times we work long hours from 8 am to some­times 10 pm and some peo­ple do not pay us,” he said.

“We have been liv­ing here legal­ly for the past eight months, we work in con­struc­tion and peo­ple try to ex­ploit us. Now we can take them to the au­thor­i­ties," the fa­ther told Guardian Me­dia.

He said al­though he owned his own com­pa­ny in Venezuela be­fore flee­ing to T&T, he is pre­pared to do any­thing legal­ly to feed his fam­i­ly.

He said he prefers To­ba­go be­cause the is­land re­minds him of his home in Mar­gari­ta.

“To­ba­go is qui­et and laid back, peo­ple are friend­ly and they leave you alone," he said.

“In­fla­tion is crazy back home. The av­er­age per­son's salary is $14,000. When you have to use $250 of that just to buy one chick­en, that is crazy. I get sad when I see peo­ple I know for many years “turn to a life of crime to save their fam­i­lies," Miguel said.

The son said he can hard­ly wait for things to im­prove in Venezuela. "I don't want to stay here. I want to go back home, so when things im­prove I will swim if I have to," he said.


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