by An­na-Lisa Paul

A protest that start­ed out­side the Queen's Park Oval on Thurs­day evening has grown in­to an overnight vig­il out­side the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber, Wright­son Road, Port of Spain.

At 11 pm there were scores of peo­ple gath­ered in­clud­ing a large con­tin­gent of res­i­dents from Beetham Gar­dens.

With chants of "Row­ley must go" and "they tak­ing all we jobs and we women," the large­ly calm crowd was be­ing care­ful­ly mon­i­tored by of­fi­cers from the Guard and Emer­gency Branch.

Checks with of­fi­cers on site re­vealed that ad­di­tion­al law en­force­ment per­son­nel were called out from the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion to as­sist in keep­ing a watch­ful eye on those at the Par­lia­ment.

An overnight vigil at the Parliament Thursday night.

Al­though slight show­ers sent many seek­ing cov­er at near­by build­ings and gov­ern­ment of­fices, the crowd which is com­prised of main­ly young men and women have vowed to spend the night.

The pro­tes­tors vowed to vote the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion out of of­fice as they be­lieve they have been sold out by al­low­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants.

"We don't want them no more. They have sold us out," they shout­ed.

One of the women present who de­clined to pro­vide her name in­di­cat­ed her pres­ence was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

In­stead, she claimed to be con­cerned about the lack of strin­gent med­ical and se­cu­ri­ty checks on the mi­grants who have con­tin­ued to ar­rive in T&T.

She said she was an­gered by the ad­di­tion­al bur­den­ing of the coun­try’s health care sys­tems, schools and the hous­ing sec­tor.

As some mem­bers of the crowd left, more con­tin­ued to trick­le in out­side the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber.

The pro­test­ers are be­ing told to re­turn by 6 am as the protest con­tin­ues.