Guyanese still being treated crudely at Barbados airport
-Jagdeo tells New York press conference
Stabroek News
March 3, 2003
(Barbados Nation) The way Guyanese are being treated by immigration officers at Grantley Adams International Airport remains a serious problem, despite assurances from Government.
That’s according to Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, who said in New York that although the Barbados Government had given his administration assurances that it wasn’t the country’s policy to target Guyanese, the treatment they received at the hands of some immigration officers persisted and he vowed not to remain silent until it was corrected.
“We have raised a number of issues with the Government of Barbados,” he told a news conference in response to a question from the SUNDAY SUN.
“The Government assures me that this is not their policy, but it continues to happen because I think the immigration officers have a lot of discretionary powers.”
Hence, his decision last year to raise it at a CARICOM meeting held in Barbados.
“I made it an issue because you just can’t deal with it at a government-to-government level if it’s not being addressed. I have to speak out against it and I did,” he said.
What was interesting, he continued, was that shortly after he went public with his complaint, Gary Voss, president of the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce, a prominent business executive from Trinidad and Tobago, raised similar concerns about the treatment of aircraft passengers at Grantley Adams.
“In Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister (Ralph) Gonsalves of St Vincent & the Grenadines spoke out in support of my position at a lecture he gave at the University of the West Indies,” said Jagdeo. “So, we are glad that is gathering momentum.”
The Guyanese leader voiced support for Owen Arthur, Barbados’ Prime Minister, who said recently that people in Barbados and the rest of the region must be prepared to accept free movement of people as part of the Caricom Single Market and Economy. He noted, too, that Arthur had gotten into “trouble” when he disclosed that an illegal immigrant from Guyana had worked on renovations at his private residence before he became Prime Minister.
“We have to discuss these issues in the public [domain],” asserted Jagdeo. “Why is it that we [should] try to sweep it under the carpet? If we are saying that we are serious about Caribbean integration and Single Market and Economy, then our people have to learn not to be so insular.”
Making a stand
He then made it clear he wasn’t going to stand for that kind of “terrible” treatment of his nationals.
“I am not going to have Guyanese treated that way and remain silent,” he said.
Jagdeo said he too had suffered at the hands of Barbadian immigration when he was Minister of Finance and passed through the airport.
“All my years as finance minister, I never travelled using protocol in Barbados,” he explained. “Even when I came to New York or Washington, I wouldn’t use protocol. So they didn’t know who I was and they would treat me in a terrible way until I opened my passport and they saw me as a minister of the government, and then everything changed. And I would say to them: ‘Why are you changing now because this is the way you treat my people?’” He charged that the problem could be traced to “a mindset” of immigration officers. “It is not the people of Barbados,” he declared. “Barbadians are a friendly people. I think it is a mindset of some of the officials.”
As the president saw it, Guyanese immigrants in Barbados were hard workers who “sustained the construction industry in Barbados. They sustained many sectors; they are not displacing Barbadians”.
