President Irfaan Ali has made known his displeasure about the existing process for Guyanese to obtain a Schengen visa for travel those European countries in the Schengen region, describing the process as backward.

Last year, the European Commission Delegation in Guyana announced that persons wishing to apply for Schengen visas will be allowed to do so in Guyana if the main destination is France.

But Guyanese still need to visit Suriname or Trinidad for a visa to visit other Schengen areas, a move the President openly criticised during the opening of the State of Tourism Conference in Guyana.

“Here is the European Union is still backward in this region, we have to travel to Trinidad and Suriname to get biometrics to do it, in a day of digitization and A.I, we have, we have the E.U, that is operating from stone age  kind of operation and they are our friends we can tell them frankly,” the President said during the opening of State of Tourism Conference.  

The Guyana Government has been pressing for the visa application process to be offered here for the past few years. An undertaking was provided three years ago that the issue would be examined.

“We can’t have people have to go two days and three days, we can’t build partnerships and friendships like that, where people have to spend four days to get a visa to travel to your country and you want to host international conferences, so you invite us to all of the beautiful conferences that we want to attend, but we have to invest four days before we get the visa to attend, the modern world can’t be that complicate,” the President noted.

This is not the first time the President has made his feelings known on the issue.During the launch of the EU/ Guyana Chamber of Commerce, the President described the situation as unacceptable, and said the European Union must find ways to begin the issuance of Schengen visas in Guyana. 

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