Govt extends migrant registration process - Trinidad Guardian Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Online

Monday, January 20, 2025

Govt extends migrant registration process

... Hinds approves over 9,000 applications

by

Chester Sambrano
736 days ago
20230115

The mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion pro­gramme has once again been ex­tend­ed, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme on i95.5FM, Hinds said the num­ber of rec­om­mend­ed ap­pli­ca­tions as of the end of 2022 re­ceived by his Min­istry was 9,133.

“I would have ap­proved 9,133 of them. A to­tal of 449 were not rec­om­mend­ed,” he said, adding some the rea­sons for some of them be­ing dis­re­gard­ed be­fore reach­ing his desk were be­cause of breach­es in the law on the part of ap­pli­cants.

“Some of them would have com­mit­ted crimes in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The min­is­ter said there are now 4,710 pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

“So, we gave com­fort to those who were here...I hard­ly hear of any un­em­ployed Venezue­lans here,” he said.

He ex­plained that since the start of the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Pro­gramme in April 2019, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue ex­tend­ing it every year.

How­ev­er, it on­ly ben­e­fits those il­le­gal mi­grants who were here be­fore the pro­gramme, as those who come in il­le­gal­ly af­ter­wards will be de­port­ed.

The ques­tion of ex­pired mi­grant cards was al­so raised but Hinds said this was a mat­ter of ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“There are many cards, up­dat­ed cards, sit­ting at the Min­istry (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) that they (mi­grants) have not come to col­lect,” he said.

Un­der the pro­gramme, ap­proved mi­grants would be able to work in this coun­try for one year.

Venezue­lans who are reg­is­tered will al­so ben­e­fit from free emer­gency med­ical ser­vices at pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tion.

Hinds said many of them have been in this coun­try for a long time but the num­bers in­creased in re­cent years due to so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances in Venezuela.

When the first reg­is­tra­tion was done, there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,500 mi­grants.

But Hinds said since then things have im­proved in Venezuela and many of them have opt­ed to re­turn home.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Hinds said bor­der se­cu­ri­ty re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment, giv­en the high vol­ume of il­le­gal guns and drugs en­ter­ing our shores.

He said the Coastal Radar Sys­tem is now 100 per cent op­er­a­tional and func­tion­al

“Every as­pect of it,” he said, adding that an up­grade is now un­der fo­cus.

Hinds al­so said they are ex­pect­ing some ad­di­tion­al ves­sels for the TTPS Coastal and River­ine Unit by the end of March but did not give a fig­ure.

“To make them far more ef­fec­tive to deal with our rivers and to deal with our coast­lines from the shore­line to two miles out,” he said.

He al­so said those po­lice of­fi­cers have ben­e­fit­ted from im­proved spe­cial­i­ty train­ing.

On the is­sue of il­le­gal firearm re­trieval, he said act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher has a new plan and is reen­er­gised to re­trieve il­le­gal firearms.

He said they are now “aim­ing to mop up” the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal guns in this coun­try, adding these weapons con­tribute to many of T&T’s homi­cides.

He said in­ves­ti­gat­ing those crimes has al­so seen im­prove­ment.

“25 cold cas­es were solved last year,” he said.

He re­ferred to calls for his re­moval by high­light­ing re­ports of high mur­der counts dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“We have been a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety for a very long time,” he said.

In giv­ing a break­down of the clas­si­fi­ca­tions of mur­ders for 2022, Hinds said gang vi­o­lence (245) ac­count­ed for most of the 605 killings. He said to date, 47 re­main un­clas­si­fied.

“Those are some of the things we are up against,” he said.

The Min­is­ter al­so boast­ed about the gains be­ing made by the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

He said while it is cus­tom­ary that au­top­sies are not done on the week­end, on Sat­ur­day, one was done on a body which was found to re­trieve bal­lis­tic ev­i­dence that as­sist­ed the po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He al­so said 21 po­lice of­fi­cers have been trained at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) and have be­come cer­ti­fied ex­am­in­ers.

“You now have po­lice of­fi­cers who have ac­quired that tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty and have en­hanced the num­bers and there­fore, we will see more res­o­lu­tions when firearms are used in crime scenes,” Hinds said.

He said an ad­di­tion­al five of­fi­cers were al­so trained in the DNA unit of the (FSC).


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