Migrants line up at Ato Boldon stadium for registration

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Hun­dreds of mi­grants, in­clud­ing moth­ers with young chil­dren, lined up un­der tents out­side the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va, en­dur­ing in­tense heat as they wait­ed to be processed.

Among them was Shawn Ram­sa­hai, who ar­rived with his Guyanese com­mon-law wife to reg­is­ter. He said the lines were mov­ing slow­ly and peo­ple were spend­ing long pe­ri­ods in­side.

A Niger­ian mi­grant said he was un­able to ac­cess some re­quired doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a Po­lice Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter.

Po­lice of­fi­cers worked to main­tain or­der de­spite lan­guage bar­ri­ers.

Just be­fore mid­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ar­rived at the com­pound and promised im­prove­ments so mi­grants could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in­doors. He urged them not to pan­ic and said Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to make the reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise as hu­mane and ac­ces­si­ble as pos­si­ble.

Minister of Homeland Security, Roger Alexander (left, grew suit), arrives at the Ato Boldon stadium to view the challenges migrants face with the Migrant Registration Programme at the site. [Image by KRISTIAN DE SILVA]

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

The sta­di­um has be­come a tem­po­rary reg­is­tra­tion hub, with long lines form­ing dai­ly as fam­i­lies clutch doc­u­ments and wait their turn. Some par­ents shad­ed their chil­dren with tow­els and um­brel­las while vol­un­teers moved be­tween rows of­fer­ing guid­ance.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged the dif­fi­cult con­di­tions but said the ex­er­cise re­mains crit­i­cal for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and mi­grant pro­tec­tion.

To date, more than 29,000 peo­ple have reg­is­tered, in­clud­ing 17,000 chil­dren. He said the fig­ures re­flect the scale of the ex­er­cise and the need for struc­tured over­sight.

In re­sponse to con­cerns about over­crowd­ing, the min­is­ter said he would con­sult with the Prime Min­is­ter on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­open­ing the on­line reg­is­tra­tion plat­form to ease pres­sure at the site.

He stressed that the process is in­tend­ed to reg­u­larise mi­grants’ sta­tus and fa­cil­i­tate ac­cess to ba­sic ser­vices, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion.

With 17,000 mi­nors al­ready reg­is­tered, he said any long-term ap­proach must pri­ori­tise young peo­ple and may in­volve col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.