Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has an­nounced that from Mon­day, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will im­ple­ment a visa sys­tem for Venezue­lans wish­ing to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment at a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain at the end of the Venezue­lan reg­is­tra­tion process.

"From Mon­day morn­ing we will be im­ple­ment­ing visas for Venezue­lans to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go," Young said.

"The visas will be is­sued by the em­bassy in Cara­cas, Venezuela, and the on­ly Venezue­lans who will be al­lowed to en­ter our le­gal ports of en­try will be those with visas," Young added.

Un­til now, Venezue­lans were free to trav­el to this coun­try on hol­i­day and busi­ness with­out the re­quire­ment of visas, for as long as 90 days.

The min­is­ter says the gov­ern­ment will now be able to de­ter­mine who is al­lowed to come to this coun­try via the visa pol­i­cy.

The min­is­ter said ini­tial fig­ures sug­gest that just over 15,000 per­sons reg­is­tered.

He promised to give a fur­ther up­date on the num­bers, in­clud­ing those of the men, women and chil­dren who were reg­is­tered.