Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

While mil­lions of dol­lars have been al­lo­cat­ed by dif­fer­ent in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to help needy mi­grants in T&T in 2022, stake­hold­ers are say­ing that not enough is be­ing done to help those in need.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) dis­bursed TT$3 mil­lion to as­sist mi­grants in T&T in 2022 while the US Em­bassy has al­lo­cat­ed US$69,845 this year to as­sist the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

How­ev­er, some stake­hold­ers have said not enough mon­ey from in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions or from the Gov­ern­ment reach­es mi­grants on the ground.

Venezue­lan ac­tivists like Yese­nia Gon­za­lez have com­plained that the sit­u­a­tion for the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T is “ter­ri­ble” and some of their ma­jor needs in­clude food, clothes, and jobs.

In 2019, over 16,000 Venezue­lan were reg­is­tered legal­ly to live and work in T&T. Since then, they have had their per­mits ex­tend­ed and the lat­est ex­ten­sion ex­pires on De­cem­ber 31, 2022.

“The US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain has re­cent­ly award­ed US$69,845 in grants to sup­port the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing a project to ad­dress spe­cif­ic so­cioe­co­nom­ic and psy­choso­cial needs of Venezue­lan mi­grants, a project to pro­vide Venezue­lan mi­grants with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op their life skills and Eng­lish lan­guage skills to in­te­grate in­to Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety, a project to build ca­pac­i­ty in the ar­eas of self-de­fense train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion and en­gage­ment for Trin­bag­on­ian na­tion­als and Venezue­lan mi­grant girls and women, and a project to ad­dress the ed­u­ca­tion­al needs of Venezue­lan chil­dren in T&T,” the US Em­bassy said in a state­ment in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about mi­grant fund­ing.

The US Em­bassy al­so not­ed that the Unit­ed States is the largest sin­gle donor for the re­sponse to the Venezue­lan re­gion­al cri­sis, pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and as­sis­tance that sup­ports refugees, asy­lum seek­ers, and oth­er pop­u­la­tions of con­cern.

The Em­bassy gave sta­tis­tics that show that more than sev­en mil­lion peo­ple in­side Venezuela need im­me­di­ate hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and more than 5.7 mil­lion Venezue­lans have been dis­placed through­out the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion.

The IOM’s Project Co­or­di­na­tor Jew­el Ali told the Guardian Me­dia that they al­lo­cat­ed TT$3 mil­lion to help mi­grants this year to help with their needs.

“For this year, from quick es­ti­mates, we have pro­vid­ed NGOs with over TT$3 mil­lion in fund­ing. We have al­so pro­vid­ed di­rect as­sis­tance to mi­grants and lo­cals and have as­sist­ed the gov­ern­ment by strength­en­ing ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ad­vice/pol­i­cy re­view.”

Some of the mon­ey has gone to as­sist in food and short-term rental sup­port for mi­grants.

She ad­mits that more can be done but qual­i­fied that by say­ing the eco­nom­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly has cur­tailed some projects.

“I agree that more can be done and more should be done. But no one agency can do it alone- es­pe­cial­ly in this glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate (part­ner­ship is cru­cial). This is why we part­ner and work with a wide range of gov­ern­ment agen­cies/min­istries -Im­mi­gra­tion, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Min­istry of Labour to name a few. We al­so part­ner with oth­er UN agen­cies, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tion, com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and take par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in re­mote and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties. We are al­so try­ing to bal­ance be­tween ur­gent needs for food or shel­ter now with the need to al­so in­vest in cre­at­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment that is in­clu­sive and where per­sons can be em­pow­ered to as­sist them­selves (re­view­ing and pro­vid­ing rec­om­men­da­tions on poli­cies- which takes time).

The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) in a state­ment to the Guardian Me­dia said they part­ner with dif­fer­ent agen­cies to pro­vide refugees and asy­lum seek­ers with help in the ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion, health, and food as­sis­tance.

The UN­HCR said as of Oc­to­ber 31, there are 22,698 refugees and asy­lum-seek­ers reg­is­tered with UN­HCR in T&T. The ma­jor­i­ty (86 per­cent) come from Venezuela, while six per cent come from Cu­ba. Over­all, there are peo­ple from 37 dif­fer­ent coun­tries of ori­gin who are reg­is­tered with UN­HCR in T&T.

The UN­HCR de­clined to say how much mon­ey it al­lo­cat­ed to part­ner agen­cies in 2022 but did say it will con­tin­ue to work with all stake­hold­ers.

Gon­za­lez ac­knowl­edged the hard work of many NGO’s in T&T but added that more needs to be done to help the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, she de­clined to name any spe­cif­ic agency or give any grants that failed to reach mi­grants in a mean­ing­ful way.

She said many Venezue­lans have no jobs, they are hun­gry, they do not have clothes for their chil­dren and their chil­dren have gone years in T&T with­out be­ing ed­u­cat­ed.

“The liv­ing con­di­tions of many of them are poor. There are those who have no house, no shel­ter. They have chil­dren. Some of the larg­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions say they do not have enough re­sources to help the mi­grants here. At the same time, those Venezue­lans are not here to beg but to do an hon­est day’s work. The Gov­ern­ment does not even al­low mi­grants en­try in­to pub­lic schools. Just to­day I helped some Venezue­lans who have chil­dren with no ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, no food and no jobs.”

She added that many mi­grants are cry­ing out for help.