Guyanese in Barbados complain about lack of job, education opportunities

Guyanese residing in Barbados complained to President Donald Ramotar at a meeting on Sunday about the prohibitive costs of education for them, as well as the non-recognition of qualifications from the University of Guyana.

The Barbados administration over the years has been criticised for its hard-line immigration policy – which has caused many Guyanese hardships.

The Barbados Nation has reported Ramotar as saying that Barbados and other territories that are making it difficult for non nationals who are educated in their countries to access jobs are robbing themselves.

Ramotar spoke to the Daily Nation Sunday evening after hearing several complaints from Guyanese nationals during a meeting at the Amaryllis Beach Resort about access to, and the prohibitive costs of, education for them, as well as the non-recognition of qualifications from the University of Guyana.

Specific to people not being hired after leaving school, Ramotar said that based on what he was hearing, a territory was “robbing” itself of the services of people who were available to them.

“If kids are here studying and they pass the CXC [Caribbean Examinations Council’s] Examination, but they can’t get a job here, I think it is just robbing themselves of a human resource that they could use to the development of their own country,” he remarked.

“Not only are you creating, probably unnecessarily, bad feelings, but you’re robbing your own country of resources.” Back in 2010 the administration of the late David Thompson deported a number of Guyanese, deemed undocumented.

“The policy is clear.” Thompson had stated emphatically, “Those who have made no attempt to regularise their status will be asked to leave. Those who have made an attempt to regularise, we will give them time to see whether their application is clear and reasonable.”

“If it isn’t, we will say ‘thank you very much, but regrettably we cannot accommodate you’, and if it is, we will grant them status.”

The policy was roundly condemned by several heads of government, as well as the Coalition For A Humane Amnesty which had said in a statement that the inhumane approach “to our Caribbean brothers and sisters may be contrasted with the progressive and constructive policy that was pursued by the previous administration.”

The group said the previous government had a policy under which undocumented or ‘illegal’ Caricom migrants who had resided in Barbados for five or more years, were permitted to come forward and apply for immigrant status.

And once they were able to demonstrate to the immigration authorities that they were gainfully employed, had no criminal record, and were likely to make a constructive contribution to our society, they were accepted.

The organisation said this was a good policy, because it came to the rescue of persons who had become ‘Barbadianised’, and had become part of Barbadian society.

Deporting such persons simply did not help anybody, and a wise Barbados government acknowledged this. According to the coalition, the ‘real’ problem with the immigration situation in Barbados is that the traditional and long-standing exchange of migrants between Barbados and Guyana evolved into a ‘migrant labour phenomenon’ over the past decade, but the government of Barbados failed to acknowledge this new development, and therefore also failed to establish a formal ‘migrant labour programme’ with appropriate controls and administrative structures.

“The reality is that the Barbadian economy and society has evolved in such a manner that the present generation of native Barbadians is no longer attracted to the physically taxing and repetitive labour of the agricultural, manual and low level service jobs that their parents and grand-parents were prepared to do!”

Over the past decade or so therefore, the Barbadian economy has come to rely on imported Guyanese workers to perform essential but unwanted jobs in agriculture, construction, care of the elderly, and a range of low-level services.