Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says Gov­ern­ment will keep re-reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants in the coun­try and will al­so keep watch­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al and oth­er sce­nar­ios.

He said on the ba­sis of Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry has been re-reg­is­ter­ing those mi­grants cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing in T&T. The process was kept open to all of the Venezue­lans who were orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered in the frame­work Gov­ern­ment launched in 2018, he said.

Hinds said about 9,000-plus peo­ple were orig­i­nal­ly in­volved but it was now cur­rent­ly about 7,000 as the process con­tin­ued.

On whether Gov­ern­ment would sim­ply keep re-reg­is­ter­ing the Venezue­lans, Hinds said, “...Well, un­til fur­ther, Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the mat­ter—yes. We’re mon­i­tor­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al sce­nario, neigh­bour­hood ...”

Hinds con­firmed that $3 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for up­grad­ing of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre at Aripo. He said Gov­ern­ment was an­tic­i­pat­ing—through Cari­com’s IM­PACS agency—an up­surge in mi­gra­tion pat­terns in the Cari­com re­gion, in­clud­ing here in T&T, and was cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties to sup­ple­ment the lim­it­ed one at the IDC.