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Monday, July 14, 2025

Education of migrant children hangs in the balance

by

Carisa Lee
1685 days ago
20201203
Venezuelan migrant children play at a home in Mayaro yesterday.

Venezuelan migrant children play at a home in Mayaro yesterday.

CARISA LEE

In June last year when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said it was ac­cept­able for Catholic schools to en­rol Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren, the board im­me­di­ate­ly got to work and sourced spots in their schools for over 2,000 mi­nors who came with their par­ents dur­ing this coun­try’s reg­is­tra­tion process.

“Yes, we have enough places for all of them in our Catholic schools,” Chair of the Catholic Arch­dio­cese’s Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees, Leela Ramdeen said.

But that’s as far as they re­cached as Ramdeen said they need ap­proval from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore they move for­ward.

“We are wait­ing for per­mis­sion to al­low them...for clear­ance from the min­is­ter, on­ly the min­is­ter could give that for them to en­ter our schools,” she said.

“It’s il­le­gal for us to al­low them to en­ter,” she con­tin­ued.

From May 31 to June 14, 2019, the Gov­ern­ment al­lowed Venezue­lans to reg­is­ter to live in this coun­try for one year pe­ri­od. That time frame was ex­tend­ed by six months be­cause of COVID-19.

A to­tal of 16,523 mi­grants reg­is­tered dur­ing the two-week process.

But while the mi­grants can work and re­ceive ba­sic health care, their chil­dren are not al­lowed to at­tend school.

It’s for this rea­son Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of TTV Sol­idary Net­work Hei­di Diquez said Gov­ern­ment should re­view what the Venezue­lans here have ac­cess to.

“This reg­is­tra­tion process that is about to be ex­tend­ed or we don’t know yet if it could be con­sid­ered, high­ly con­sid­ered, that comes with a ben­e­fit of hav­ing ac­cess to for­mal ed­u­ca­tion,” Diquez said.

While here some of the mi­grant chil­dren at­tend­ed a pro­gramme called Child-Friend­ly Spaces held dai­ly in Ro­man Catholic Parish­es in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

But since COVID-19 the pro­gramme stopped.

“We can­not call them schools…when they were run­ning the Venezue­lan chil­dren would go there and the priest would raise funds, they would have class­es to learn func­tion­al Eng­lish and main­tain parts of their cul­ture,” Ramdeen said.

It’s where Kleiv­er Rosquel ,10, has been at­tend­ing since he came with his moth­er to Ma­yaro over a year ago.

Now Kleiv­er who should be in Stan­dard four is home all day.

He gets week­ly work­sheets, but his par­ents still wor­ry about his fu­ture.

“He is good at school back in Venezuela... this no teach, no good,” his fa­ther Eiv­er Rosquel said.

Kleiv­er was play­ing with his younger cousin and pup­py when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed, he said he likes math and Eng­lish and miss­es his friends.

“Plen­ty friends,” he said.

His moth­er Mar­vis Vieira said there are sev­er­al fam­i­lies in the Ma­yaro Com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing the same sit­u­a­tion.

No one was at the Ma­yaro RC Parish when we vis­it­ed but a peek in­side showed ev­i­dence of can­celled class­es with stacked bench­es and an emp­ty white­board.

Oth­er chil­dren who at­tend­ed the school now re­ceive an ed­u­ca­tion through the Equal Place Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme for sec­ondary school chil­dren sup­port­ed by UNICEF.

“We have al­most 150 chil­dren or stu­dents reg­is­tered,” Diquez said.

Ramdeen said since Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment they have been in con­stant con­tact with Gov­ern­ment to find out when per­mis­sion would be grant­ed.

“The chil­dren are vul­ner­a­ble, re­mem­ber when they not in school, when their par­ents are work­ing, they vul­ner­a­ble if they home alone or on the streets… I feel for the chil­dren, re­al­ly they need some form of ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

When con­tact­ed about the plight of the mi­grant chil­dren, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by Dol­ly said the de­ci­sion rests with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

She added the sit­u­a­tion with the mi­grants is a bit flu­id still and said her min­istry is still await­ing di­rec­tion.


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