Hiccups as migrant registration begins

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

As reg­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial­ly opened on Mon­day, some mi­grants seek­ing to reg­u­larise their sta­tus en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing the on­line plat­form, rais­ing con­cerns among ad­vo­cates and ser­vice providers as­sist­ing with the process.

Sev­er­al mi­grants turned to cy­ber cafés and sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tions for help, on­ly to find that the reg­is­tra­tion web­site was not ful­ly func­tion­al on the first day.

Fen­ton Bar­riteau of Baros Of­fice Sup­plies said that at­tempts to ac­cess the site on Mon­day morn­ing were un­suc­cess­ful.

“We at­tempt­ed to get on­to the site and we got redi­rect­ed, and it’s not func­tion­al,” Bar­riteau said, adding that sev­er­al mi­grants had al­ready vis­it­ed the es­tab­lish­ment seek­ing as­sis­tance.

Bar­ri­tau ex­plained that his busi­ness was pre­pared to as­sist mi­grants with the on­line process, in­clud­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ing pay­ments where re­quired.

“We no­ticed that it’s an on­line pay­ment sys­tem, so as we’ve done in the past with stu­dent per­mits, we’re will­ing to use our cards to make the pay­ment and ac­cept cash from the ap­pli­cant,” he said.

He not­ed that many mi­grants were al­ready fa­mil­iar with the cy­ber cafe, hav­ing used its ser­vices for pre­vi­ous im­mi­gra­tion-re­lat­ed mat­ters. How­ev­er, Bar­riteau ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the sys­tem was not op­er­a­tional on the first day.

“The one month al­lot­ted by the gov­ern­ment is fair, but it’s a bit dis­ap­point­ing that it’s not work­ing on the first day,” he said, adding that once func­tion­al, the process should be seam­less.

Al­so ex­press­ing con­cern was Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port group (LARMS), who said mi­grants had been anx­ious­ly await­ing the launch of the reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem.

Ram­nar­ine said she ac­com­pa­nied a mi­grant to the cy­ber cafe on Mon­day morn­ing to ob­serve how the process would un­fold, so she could bet­ter ad­vise oth­ers.

“I was very anx­ious to see how it would roll out so that I could more com­pe­tent­ly ad­vise oth­ers,” she said.

She not­ed that while LARMS works close­ly with Venezue­lan mi­grants, there are oth­er mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties that re­main cau­tious about the process.

“Some mi­grants from oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty, are still very sus­pi­cious,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“More needs to be done to en­cour­age all sec­tors of the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty to come out, be­cause this is very im­por­tant for da­ta col­lec­tion.”

Ram­nar­ine said the ini­tial tech­ni­cal is­sues were dis­ap­point­ing and could dis­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“I had hoped for a more ef­fi­cient and seam­less process com­pared with the 2019 reg­is­tra­tion,” she said.

“I hope it doesn’t de­ter peo­ple from ac­cess­ing and reg­is­ter­ing, be­cause I re­al­ly want this to be an ef­fi­cient and suc­cess­ful ex­er­cise.”

She added that clear­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion and greater ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty from au­thor­i­ties would help build con­fi­dence among mi­grants.

On­line reg­is­tra­tion of mi­grants will end on Feb­ru­ary 25 fol­low­ing which ap­proved ap­pli­cants will be giv­en an in- per­son in­ter­view af­ter Car­ni­val.