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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

T&T mulls border lockdown

by

20140225

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has held talks with de­fence heads about T&T's bor­ders as a re­sult of the cur­rent un­rest in Venezuela, which might cause peo­ple there to flee their home­land.Protests have been oc­cur­ring in Venezuela since Feb­ru­ary 12. About ten peo­ple have been killed to date, in­clud­ing a mo­tor­cy­clist� killed by a clothes­line strung across a street. Protests have con­tin­ued in­to this week.Gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers blame each oth­er for the sit­u­a­tion. Op­po­si­tion groups have ac­cused the state of me­dia ma­nip­u­la­tion and the Gov­ern­ment has ac­cused in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia of fu­elling ten­sions and Venezue­lan pri­vate me­dia of ma­nip­u­lat­ing the news.

Venezue­lan am­bas­sador Coro­mo­to Godoy, in a state­ment last week, said on Feb­ru­ary 14 Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro pre­sent­ed a na­tion­al plan for peace and co­hab­i­ta­tion which in­clud­ed the dis­arm­ing of vi­o­lent gangs and crim­i­nals and set­ting up a spe­cial po­lice and mil­i­tary brigade to probe, com­bat and neu­tralise drug gangs and "mer­ce­nar­ies sent from Colom­bia by para­mil­i­tary groups." On T&T bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, Grif­fith not­ed that sev­er­al years ago sim­i­lar un­rest in Haiti caused hun­dreds of peo­ple to flee to near­by Ja­maica, il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing that coun­try and caus­ing ten­sions with­in the re­gion.Grif­fith said: "We are look­ing at all mat­ters where se­cu­ri­ty for T&T is con­cerned. I have met the Chief of De­fence Staff and oth­er agen­cies on such mat­ters that may arise out of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion."He added so far there had not been any re­ports of peo­ple try­ing to flee to T&T which is sev­en miles across the Gulf of Paria.

Air­lift plan still on ta­ble

Yes­ter­day act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said his dai­ly up­date from T&T's Cara­cas em­bassy con­firmed things were calm in Venezuela yes­ter­day."We were in­formed there are two groups of T&T work­ers in Venezuela's oil and gas in­dus­try, to­talling 30 peo­ple, and the com­pa­nies they work for have con­tin­gency plans in case evac­u­a­tion is nec­es­sary," he added.

Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment's own con­tin­gency plan to air­lift em­bassy and oth­er T&T na­tion­als was still on the ta­ble at min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el.Caribbean Air­lines com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Clint Williams not­ed that gov­ern­men­tal au­thor­i­ties said on Sun­day that in the event of the evac­u­a­tion of T&T staff at the Cara­cas em­bassy and oth­er T&T na­tion­als is nec­es­sary, CAL would be in­volved.

"If it be­comes nec­es­sary we will sup­port any ini­tia­tive to as­sist the Caribbean peo­ple," he said.

Refugees un­like­ly

Yes­ter­day Venezue­lan na­tion­al Ida Her­nan­dez, who has lived in T&T for over 20 years and has three chil­dren born in T&T, said the last es­ti­mate of Venezue­lans in T&T was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000, two years ago.She added: "But clear­ly by now it will be more."Her­nan­dez, who lives in Ch­agua­nas, said she did not be­lieve Venezue­lans would flee the un­rest to come to T&T il­le­gal­ly and stay, since, she added, any such peo­ple would more like­ly look to the US to set­tle.She said while most Venezue­lans come here to work or go back and forth to buy sup­plies to take back to their fam­i­lies, they had more of an affin­i­ty with the US in terms of set­tling and would more like­ly grav­i­tate to the US since that coun­try and Venezuela had sim­i­lar large pop­u­la­tions, land­scapes and oth­er facets.Her­nan­dez said sev­er­al Venezue­lans who came to T&T re­cent­ly to buy sup­plies, plan­ning to re­turn home are strand­ed here tem­porar­i­ly ow­ing to the un­rest.


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