AG: Where will refugees be housed?

ATTORNEY General Faris Al-Rawi has questioned where people applying for refugee status in TT would be housed when the Housing Development Corporation has 170,000 people on their database.

"If we add another 100,000 people to that how do we deliver that? How are we footing the bill?"

He was speaking Friday at a media conference held at the Office of the Attorney General, Port of Spain, and responding to criticisms by Amnesty International and attorney Dr Emir Crowne who both pointed out that, contrary to previous statements by Al-Rawi, that the country did have have laws for refugees as signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.

Al-Rawi said those submissions should be rejected out of hand and he found it quite surprising Crowne, the lawyer hired by the Media Association of TT to deal with the Cybercrime bill, could get the issue "as dramatically wrong as he did." He explained TT is a "dualistic" country and for international law to become law it must be enacted by an act of Parliament and it was a similar situation with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and Global Forum.

He explained the conversation for TT was what mechanisms were going to be put in place to operationalise the law and added it meant priority housing, education and healthcare.

He said morally speaking the Government wants to do this and it sounds right and it is right to ensure people in distress do not continue to be in distress.

"But as a Government you have to check all your bases. Where is the housing coming from? Where is the education coming from? How is it being paid for? Because it is well and good to want to do something but you have to make sure you actually comply with the law."

The issue came to the fore with the recent arrest of 75 Cuban asylum seekers who were protesting outside United Nations House in Port of Spain for obstruction of the passageway. There were sentenced to two days imprisonment after pleading guilty.