Scams’ luring Guyanese to Barbados
Guyana Chronicle
August 2, 2004
Barbados Nation - Don’t blame Guyanese workers for flocking to Barbados for jobs and living here illegally.
Blame Barbadian companies and individuals who are advertising in Guyana, or sending people there to lure Guyanese here with promises of high wages and work permits.
Then, after the workers get here, taking their passports and not processing work permits for them.
Because of this, hundreds of Guyanese are working and living here illegally.
So rampant is this problem the Guyana government, on advice from its consulate here, has advised Guyanese desirous of working here not to travel until the company has secured a work permit for them. And some newspapers have stopped publishing such “wanted” ads.
And locally, the Immigration Department now only accepts work permit applications from listed businesses and registered self-employed business people.
“They are very unscrupulous people who take [the worker’s] passport, would say to the person, ‘start work I have got the work permit for you’. The person feels everything is in order. They may work six months [as] it is usually a short-term work permit that they tell them they’ve had,” said attorney Ann Roberta-Hanoman.
“At the end of six months [the employers] say, ‘everything is all right, we’re getting your permit done’. After two years they would discover they never had papers, they were here illegally and the axe falls on [them],” said Roberta-Hanoman.
Norma Faria, Guyana’s Consul in Barbados, said because of this situation lives are being wrecked as people are leaving jobs to come here for more money and a better life, “and unless they have the work permit they can’t register with the NIS, [they] have to accept low wages and be hiding, always in fear.”
“At every opportunity the Consul cautions Guyanese, both here and in Guyana, about being involved in unscrupulous middlemen and parasitical elements, including members of the legal fraternity here,” said Faria.
“I know for a fact they are sending Guyanese into the Immigration Department when they don’t have papers here. They’re taking exorbitant sums of money from them, leading them on that by going through a lawyer they would get the work permit or their residency status.
“I have cases here where the Guyanese said to me the Immigration refused them status and they’re on their way back to Guyana,” he added.
When contacted on the problem, Chief Immigration Officer Gilbert Greaves said he does not want “to make a comment at this time on anything relating to the issue of Guyanese nationals.”