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Dear Minister,
I am bringing to your attention a refusal to issue me an emergency travel document at the Guyana Consulate in Toronto, I requested about two weeks before the Sept/19/2020 business travel WestJet flight to Guyana.
The recently installed government has promised to work in the best interest of all Guyanese inclusively not just in words but actions, political squabbles during election season is expected, once things are decided and settled we have to move beyond and collaborate. I asked the staff at the Guyana Consular Services if the decision not to issue me the travel document was made by the Covid taskforce, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs Ministry or GCAA. This is also another short working paper in helping to improve processes.
Here is some background information, the last Guyana passport issued to me was in 2005 in person at the Guyana Consulate in Toronto, 505 Consumers Road, at that time I would have given Consular Services the
first passport issued in 1990 at Georgetown, Guyana, renewed around 1997 at the Toronto Consulate, then renewed again around 2002 at Georgetown, Guyana each time with the original birth certificate.
Certainly they should have retained a paper copy in one of those cream flimsy cardboard folders in a file cabinet or by now upgraded to electronic storage format or cloud
The Guyana Consulate could have also have done a verification with the passport office in Georgetown One employee here at the Toronto office give the reason for not issuing the travel document was because I have a matter in court Another employee said a photo copy of the birth certificate was not sufficient ( would a certified notarized copy then be valid)
It has always been recommended and a universally acceptable practice that photo copies of important documents be accessible especially in todays world of cloud storage, so for example if a Guyanese was travelling in Africa or India and had their passport stolen, lost, damaged – fell into a river or somehow got destroyed, would they be left stranded overseas whether they were travelling on government work,
business, study or holiday until they could get an original replacement of their birth certificate while in a faraway land.
When someone apply for a visitor or residency visa for the first time their birth certificate is required, when the person relocates to the popular countries, the valid passport with visa is presented to government authorities to establish photo identity documents like a residency card, drivers license, health insurance card, citizenship card – passport, the birth certificate from your foreign country is almost never requested again, this is because the photo identity documents issued in these parts are very secure, so why wouldn’t the Guyana Consulate issue me a travel document for onetime one way travel to my birth country Guyana, if and when I decide to travel outside of Guyana I will need a full passport, if the Consulate felt they needed to conduct additional due diligence then they could have contacted the Guyana Passport and Immigration office in Georgetown.
The important questions are do I have a valid Guyana passport but somehow want to be issued a temporary travel document and why ?
If I’m a naturalized Canadian do I have the passport in my possession , if not why ?
The key concept in issuing any travel document to an applicant is to verify and ascertain their identity, I hope to have the Guyana Consular Service in Toronto contact me by email shortly to issue me the document at the earliest opportunity
Regards
Ronald Thompson
