With thou­sands of Venezue­lans al­ready liv­ing in Trinidad il­le­gal­ly, Ce­dros Coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh has moved a mo­tion call­ing for bet­ter sur­veil­lance of the porous bor­ders of the south­west­ern penin­su­la.

Speak­ing at the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing on Thurs­day, Teelucks­ingh said Venezue­lans are con­tin­u­ing to come through Ce­dros, Erin, Moru­ga and Car­li Bay.

Say­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 200 Venezue­lans ar­rive week­ly, Teelucks­ingh said the for­eign­ers were putting a strain on the health ser­vices. He called for a sys­tem to be set up where­by ill and de­hy­drat­ed Venezue­lans could get im­me­di­ate med­ical as­sis­tance. He al­so called for an end to the ex­ploita­tion of the Venezue­lans flee­ing from the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of their home­land.

Teelucks­ingh said the in­flux of Venezue­lans has con­tributed to a ram­pant in­crease in il­le­gal items en­ter­ing the coun­try, adding that the radar sys­tem which keeps 24-hour sur­veil­lance on the coast is so out­dat­ed it is dif­fi­cult to pin­point the pres­ence of smug­glers. He al­so not­ed that the Ce­dros se­cu­ri­ty base need­ed in­creased man­pow­er to deal with the en­try of the for­eign­ers.

"Right now the sta­tion does not have the ca­pac­i­ty to deal with the in­flux of Venezue­lans and Colom­bians, as well as the il­le­gal goods that are smug­gled dai­ly. Lots of mon­ey is spent on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the ba­sic man­pow­er con­straints are not ad­dressed," Teelucks­ingh added.

In the mo­tion moved, Teelucks­ingh said the Venezue­lans are sub­ject­ed to ex­ploita­tion be­cause of the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in Venezuela.

"The T&T Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies must take steps to deal with its in­flux of il­le­gal im­mi­grants and in par­tic­u­lar the so­cial and eco­nom­ic im­pacts as a re­sult of their de­mands and our so­cial sys­tems," he said.

"The Gov­ern­ment must al­so take im­me­di­ate steps to pro­tect our bor­ders by mak­ing greater use of the as­sets of the Coast Guard."

Call­ing for the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion in Ce­dros to be strength­ened, he said the rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions with ex­pe­ri­ence in mi­gra­tion should al­so be con­tact­ed to as­sist.

In a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive, a se­nior Cus­toms of­fi­cer said Venezue­lans have been en­ter­ing il­le­gal­ly through in­lets along the south­ern coast, in­clud­ing Puer­to Grande, Erin, Los Iros, Quinam and as far as Moru­ga. Oth­er in­lets used by smug­glers were iden­ti­fied along the coast­line at Guapo, Chatham, San Fer­nan­do, Vista­bel­la and Mara­bel­la.

The Venezue­lans are re­port­ed to be pay­ing be­tween US$200 to US$300 to get to Trinidad to seek a bet­ter life. Last week, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter promised in­creased bor­der pa­trols along the coast­lines. He said Gov­ern­ment planned on get­ting 14 Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels back up and run­ning in the short­est time.

Dur­ing a re­cent vis­it by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the Coast Guard’s head­quar­ters, he was told that 25 in­ter­cep­tors were not work­ing. The cost of get­ting the 14 boats back in­to ser­vice is $6 mil­li­on. They will bring to 19 the to­tal num­ber of work­ing in­ter­cep­tors. Young said they would be strate­gi­cal­ly placed along T&T’s coast on the ba­sis of in­tel­li­gence re­ports, among plans to de­fend the mar­itime bor­ders.