Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty, which is fo­cus­ing on the treat­ment of mi­grants, are rec­om­mend­ing a spe­cial court be es­tab­lished to deal with hu­man traf­fick­ing and a whistle­blow­ing mech­a­nism to re­port abuse against mi­grants.

The rec­om­men­da­tion re­gard­ing the whistle­blow­ing mech­a­nism comes a year af­ter the JSC looked in­to the com­plaint of a 21-year-old Venezue­lan woman, who claimed she was raped by mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard and thrown out of a car along the West­ern Main Road.

The com­mit­tee said, “The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty should pro­vide Par­lia­ment with an up­date on the sta­tus of the Coast Guard’s dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings, fur­ther to the com­plaint of sex­u­al mis­con­duct against its of­fi­cer(s); and the Coast Guard should col­lab­o­rate to de­vel­op a whistle­blow­ing mech­a­nism as a means of al­low­ing per­son­nel as­signed to su­per­vise de­tainees at the He­li­port to anony­mous­ly raise con­cerns about pos­si­ble abuse.”

Fol­low­ing the al­le­ga­tions, head of the TTPS Gen­der Based Vi­o­lence Unit, Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, at a me­dia con­fer­ence, said af­ter the first re­port of rape and abuse was made, a team was set up to in­ves­ti­gate but found no ev­i­dence to sup­port the woman’s claim. She said a team was formed and vis­it­ed the he­li­port and found that at the time of the vis­it, “no sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion was dis­closed at the lo­ca­tion.”

The com­mit­tee said af­ter the com­plaint was raised by the Venezue­lan woman, it vis­it­ed the He­li­port and found that there was a breach in hu­man rights stan­dards, as the fa­cil­i­ty re­strict­ed ac­cess to rel­a­tives of mi­grants and was with­in a mil­i­tary base.

The com­mit­tee al­so wants an up­date on ad­just­ments made to the de­ten­tion cen­tre af­ter it was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared an Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre last year.

And with one con­vic­tion for hu­man traf­fick­ing so far, the com­mit­tee wants the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the Ju­di­cia­ry re­gard­ing the pos­si­ble cre­ation of a court specif­i­cal­ly for hu­man traf­fick­ing-re­lat­ed of­fences.

The rec­om­men­da­tions were de­tailed in a re­port laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, which al­so called on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to re­port to Par­lia­ment on ef­forts to cre­ate ad­di­tion­al class­room space in schools for mi­grant chil­dren.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should con­sult the UN­ESCO Pol­i­cy Pa­per en­ti­tled If You Don’t Un­der­stand, How Can You Learn?, and re­port to Par­lia­ment on the ex­tent to which ed­u­ca­tion can be pro­vid­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go to non-Eng­lish speak­ing mi­grant chil­dren in their na­tive lan­guage, at least on a par­tial or short-term ba­sis,” the JSC said

The min­istry was ad­vised to fa­cil­i­tate leg­isla­tive ad­just­ments to en­sure mi­grant chil­dren have ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law. It said a stu­dent per­mit waiv­er for chil­dren of all in need of pro­tec­tion, which in­cludes asy­lum seek­ers, refugees and Venezue­lans, should al­so be in­sti­tut­ed to al­low them ac­cess to schools.

The com­mit­tee al­so looked at mi­grants be­ing abused at work and called on the Min­istry of Labour to re­port to Par­lia­ment by May on ways to close­ly mon­i­tor busi­ness­es who abuse the mi­grant work­ers.

The Min­istry of Labour, the com­mit­tee sub­mit­ted, is work­ing with the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment to fill 14 va­can­cies for Labour In­spec­tor 1, in an ef­fort to bet­ter mon­i­tors busi­ness­es that em­ploy­ee mi­grant work­ers.