Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly has post­poned his fact find­ing trip to Syr­ia where sev­er­al T&T na­tion­als, in­clud­ing chil­dren are be­ing held in refugee camps and de­ten­tion cen­tres. In­stead, he plans to trav­el to the Unit­ed King­dom next month where he will meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of in­ter­na­ton­al NGOs to dis­cuss the lo­gis­tics of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es to be done be­fore the T&T na­tion­als can re­turn home.

Ram­bal­ly had planned to vis­it Syr­ia be­cause sev­er­al of the de­tainees there are from his con­stituen­cy. He re­called that in Feb­ru­ary of­fi­cials of the T&T mis­sion in Gene­va told the Unit­ed Na­tions they were un­able to de­ploy per­son­nel to Syr­ia for ver­i­fi­ca­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, or in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“In re­sponse to this im­passe and at the re­quest of con­stituents and var­i­ous mem­bers of the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty, I have de­cid­ed to en­gage in the ver­i­fi­ca­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion process for the 64 chil­dren and 22 adult pri­ma­ry care­givers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al NGOs. This ini­tia­tive pri­mar­i­ly serves the in­ter­ests of my con­stituents and is al­so in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” he ex­plained

Ram­bal­ly said since a Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee led by for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed and in­clud­ing re­tired diplo­mat Patrick Ed­wards and Is­lam­oc leader Kwe­si At­i­ba has been ap­point­ed, it would be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to du­pli­cate those ef­forts at this stage.

“I am on the pub­lic record for en­cour­ag­ing fam­i­lies to at­tend the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee’s new head­quar­ters to pro­vide all the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their loved ones in con­flict zones,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said, af­ter three months the com­mit­tee has on­ly be able to com­plete the dataset of the de­tainees.

“Con­se­quent­ly, the log­i­cal next step is to con­duct the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of that in­for­ma­tion, and we ea­ger­ly await an an­nounce­ment re­gard­ing the broad time­lines for this process.

“While we are giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment every op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­ple­ment mean­ing­ful steps to­wards achiev­ing the le­git­i­mate aim of repa­tri­a­tion, we re­main mind­ful of the SSA re­port in­di­cat­ing a strat­e­gy to frus­trate the fam­i­lies seek­ing the re­turn of their loved ones. We wit­nessed a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in 2018 with the cre­ation of Team Nightin­gale, which was un­der-re­sourced and failed to make progress in this mat­ter,” he said.

Ram­bal­ly said he is de­ter­mined to en­sure that his­to­ry doesn’t re­peat it­self and a sit­u­a­tion where “af­ter col­lat­ing the same in­for­ma­tion al­ready pro­vid­ed to Nightin­gale, the gov­ern­ment re­it­er­ates its lack of re­sources for de­ploy­ment.”