Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A group of Venezue­lan mi­grants, in­clud­ing chil­dren, who have been beg­ging and sell­ing bev­er­ages at the Munro Road fly­over, in cen­tral Trinidad, say they have no place to work or go to school, they are try­ing to make ends meet.

Near­by res­i­dents have ex­pressed con­cern about the six mi­grant fam­i­lies who are at the fly­over from as ear­ly as 4 am. Some of them hold plac­ards beg­ging for help, while oth­ers sell cold bev­er­ages to pass­ing mo­torists.

One of them, Fer­nan­da, who has been in T&T for five years, said this is their on­ly way to pay rent, get food, and send mon­ey for their fam­i­lies in Venezuela. Her two chil­dren live with her moth­er in Venezuela, how­ev­er, oth­er mi­grants at the site say they have no choice but to beg and on the streets with their chil­dren since they are not al­lowed to go to school.

Munroe Road/Ca­roni Sa­van­nah coun­cil­lor Adri­an Ali said the sit­u­a­tion with the mi­grants on the fly­over was brought to his at­ten­tion by his burgess­es.

“I have re­ceived sev­er­al calls about the sit­u­a­tion here over the past few weeks, and I passed here a cou­ple of times in and out of my dis­trict. I no­ticed that a num­ber of mi­grants were here, ba­si­cal­ly try­ing to make a liv­ing for them­selves and their chil­dren,” he said.

“I al­so re­ceived com­plaints that in cer­tain in­stances, they have been beg­ging or ask­ing for help when you stop at these lights here. It has be­come a bit of a prob­lem for our con­stituents.”

Ali is call­ing for the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions to ad­dress the plight of this group of mi­grants. Their reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus is not known.

Just last week Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said that there are more than 70,000 Venezue­lan mi­grants in T&T but on­ly 16,000 are reg­is­tered to work and live in this coun­try.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM), which col­lect­ed and analysed da­ta from 1,323 Venezue­lan na­tion­als in T&T found that dif­fi­cul­ties with ac­cess to food, in­come gen­er­a­tion, shel­ter, ed­u­ca­tion, and train­ing are the ma­jor prob­lems fac­ing mi­grants. The IOM re­port al­so found in­stances of street dwelling.