Parliament committee flags large number of Haitians, Cubans unaccounted for
-summons ministers
The “alarming” statistics on the number of Cubans and Haitians overstaying their time in Guyana but who cannot be accounted for caused the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs to yesterday summon Minister of Citizenship Winston Felix and Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge to discuss possible human trafficking.
“When you have a large number of people that cannot be found then something is definitely wrong… w e have to find out what is really going on,” Chairman of the Committee, PPP/C MP Gail Teixeira said during discussions of the findings.
“It’s not a question of who is trickling in. The issue is not who is coming and going; it’s the issue of the numbers remaining and where you can’t find them, you can’t see them… This is trafficking, this is trafficking,” she added.
She informed that at a sitting of the committee in February of this year questions were raised on the number of Haitians coming into the country but not leaving and a request for statistics on the entry numbers was made of Felix.
On May 23rd Felix wrote to the Clerk of the National Assembly and provided statistics of not only Haitians but of the eight main groups of foreign nationals with the largest arrival and departure figures for the past five years and the first quarter of this year.
A breakdown of the information provided is shown in the table below as related by the Chairman yesterday with the nationalities and numbers for arrivals and departures of the respective years. persons from Bangladesh. “Why not the Bangladeshis?” she questioned.
The Committee Chairman directed her to the matrix provided by the Minister of Citizenship which she stressed reveals that only 300 Bangladeshis arrived in Guyana between 2013 and 2018 with 74 showing as remaining here compared to the data on Haitians for the same period.
The committee has until July 4th 2018, the date of the next meeting, when members will return with possible questions for the two ministers to provide clarity.