TIP Report…
FOUR days after the Government of Guyana vehemently rejected the US State Department report on trafficking in persons in Guyana, the American Embassy in Guyana notified the Guyana Government that the Global Trafficking in Persons (GTIP) office in the State Department was desirous of discussing Guyana’s public concerns regarding the US issued TIP report.
Minister Priya Manickchand, in speaking with Luis C. De Baca, Ambassador-at-large and head of the GTIP office, in a telephone conversation yesterday afternoon, insisted that the conclusions and recommendations in the report are based on an earlier inaccuracy about large numbers of traffickers and trafficking victims existing in Guyana.
The Minister observed that, despite sincere and comprehensive efforts, the State department failed to have the inaccuracies corrected and GTIP continued basing their conclusions and recommendations on those inaccuracies.
The Minister pointed out how preposterous the finding is that children from the country who come to town to go to school are potential victims of domestic servitude and therefore trafficking.
Equally senseless, she declared, was the recommendation that Guyana establish trafficking specific shelters which provide shelter, care and counselling without credible evidence of a scale of trafficking to warrant more than what currently exists through Government supported NGOs like Help and Shelter.
Minister Manickchand represented to the Ambassador that Guyanese across the board are incensed that isolated, anecdotal accounts of trafficking in persons in Guyana were given such unusual significance as to generate many of the recommendations by the US State Department in its report.
The Minister countered the Ambassador’s invitation for Guyana to work in a partnership with the US by pointing out that the US State Department did not see it fit to have the glaring inaccuracies and baseless accusations against Guyana corrected.
Their stubborn refusal to acknowledge Guyana’s contentions and their insistence on not changing anything in the report, the Minister said, makes a favourable response by Guyana to their offer of partnership difficult.
The Government, in a statement last night, said it continues to insist that the reports are misleading and based on fabrications designed to make the GTIP office appear competent. The Administration said it intends to approach higher levels of the US Government and members of Congress to correct these misleading reports.