Travel documents for all of the deportees on the list to be returned to Guyana have been issued, paving the way for the lifting of the visa ban on government workers and their families by the US government.

At his regular monthly press briefing yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Rudy Insanally, told reporters that the Foreign Ministry had issued, through its embassy and consulates, travel documents for all of the 113 deportees on the list. However, he noted that one of the persons had since died. "That paves the way, in our view, for the lifting of the sanction."

The US Justice Department had imposed a non-immigrant visa ban on government workers and their families on October 7, after a one-month ultimatum for Guyana to accept the deportees expired.

Insanally said that he had raised the lifting of the sanctions with Guyana's Ambassador to the US, Dr Odeen Ishmael, who had taken it up with the US State Department. The State Department had conveyed to Ishmael, Insanally said, that "they are very satisfied with the way we have acted in the matter," and would make a recommendation to the US Justice Department for the sanction to be lifted. "I think that is currently being done," he added.

Noting that US Ambassador to Guyana, Ronald Godard, "has echoed that satisfaction" he expressed the hope that "there would be a reciprocal response by way of removal of the sanction."

Responding to concerns that the Guyana government might not be doing as much as could be done to help in the resettlement of the deportees, Dr Insanally said that was an unfair criticism.

"That is not the case. We are catering for the arrival of the deportees," he said, adding that the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Human Services were fully engaged in the process of resettling. The procedure allows for the interviewing of the deportees to see how their needs could best be met. Most of the deportees, he said, had relatives who could accommodate them.

He noted, too, that the US Government had accepted that the repatriation of the deportees was a burden and offered to provide assistance in terms of monitoring and technical cooperation.

The deportees, he said, had been arriving in small groups with the largest to date being on Tuesday. Guyana, he said, was a small country and it could be a formidable problem in terms of dealing with criminal elements.

At present, he said, Guyana was proceeding to negotiate a memorandum of understanding to deal with the handling of the deportee issue. "Perhaps as early as next week we will be in dialogue with the US to hammer out that framework of agreement which will then provide very clear mechanisms for handling deportees in the future... for also eliminating the responsibilities on both sides, in terms of the US in so far as information and other procedures are concerned and Guyana in so far as the state from which the deportees are said to have come."

Trinidad, he noted, had already signed such an agreement and Barbados and Jamaica were currently moving in the same direction.