Nothing in place to reintegrate deportees -Top Cop

Nothing in place to reintegrate deportees  -Top Cop

Two days after the United States government delivered 26 Guyanese deportees on a special flight, the Police Commissioner, Seelall Persaud has revealed that while some monitoring might be done, there is no system in place to assist the deportees with being reintegrated back in the Guyanese society.

Persaud told reporters on Thursday that he has asked for a file to be compiled on all of the deportees who were recently delivered so that the Force could know the reason behind their deportation.

However, he said there is “nothing in place” to assist them now that there are back in Guyana.

“There is nothing in place as far as I know. There use to be, a few years ago when the International Organisation for Migration, but I am not aware of anything happening right now. So they are pretty much like they were before, they are on their own hoping to get help from relatives and community leaders”, Persaud said.

He explained that the Guyana Police Force has a number of ongoing community projects that should benefit the deportees once they live in those communities with the existing projects.

There have been calls over the years for Guyana to have an established programme to assist the deportees upon their return, especially those who would have left Guyana when they were very young and those who may have no known relatives here. That problem has resulted in many of them turning to a life on the streets as they find it difficult to find jobs and maintain themselves.

The US government had supported a resettlement programme a few years ago but that programme fell apart with no real results.

Filed: 5th February, 2015

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