Guyana has narrowly averted a visa ban by Canada over the issuance of travel documents for 41 deportees that Ottawa wants to send back here.

Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon told reporters yesterday at a post-Cabinet press briefing that the incident was averted because the government had issued the relevant travel documents. Stabroek News understands that the 41 persons would be returned in batches. His disclosure came a day after the United States announced the lifting of a two-month-old ban on the issuance of non-immigrant visas for government functionaries and their immediate families over Georgetown's delay in processing particulars for 112 Guyanese that Washington wanted to deport here.

Canada's ban would have been imposed yesterday had the travel documents not been issued. And it would have meant that requests for visas by government employees would have been sent to Ottawa for processing instead of being handled in Trinidad. Were the requested travel documents not issued after a further 30-day period had elapsed, the Canadian government would have asked the Guyana government for a guarantee that the person applying for the visa would return to Guyana.

In a previous attempt to address the deportee issue, the Canadian authorities had dumped unannounced at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri a number of deportees for whom it requested travel documents, but which the Guyana government was slow in providing. Guyana protested the action of the Canadian authorities and the then Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy had apologized to the Guyana government for the action of the Canadian immigration authorities. The two sides were then to work out mutually satisfactory arrangements for the issue of travel documents that would have taken account of Guyana's concern that many of those to be repatriated no longer had any familial ties in Guyana. These arrangements were apparently not worked out.

Meanwhile, on a related issue, Luncheon said that the US government wanted the special arrangements that Guyana had put in place to respond to requests for travel documents for deportees to remain. He said that since it had been presented with the list of 112 names by the US embassy here, the task force that had been set up was receiving, almost daily, requests for travel documents through the Guyana missions in the US. This task force was established by President Bharrat Jagdeo after it was acknowledged that the government agencies which should have been gathering the information for the US authorities were delinquent.

Luncheon said that Guyana would be trying to have included in the memorandum of understanding to be finalised with the US on deportees, due consideration for the observation by the US authorities of the civil and political rights of the persons it wanted to send back here. Luncheon said that at present, the civil and political rights of these persons were ignored as they were often deported before their cases were tried and the cases were abandoned, as a result, because the deportees could not appear. He said that the government would approach the other CARICOM states to develop a regional position on the issue.