Police, medical vetting of new citizens inadequate

The “party” continued at the Central Bank today, but there were no treats in the testimony of acting Director of Immigration Colonel Peter Parchue, who spoke for more than two hours. The audience, up now to three members of the press and another member of the public, listened as Parchue flatly told the commissioners that he would not be able to answer any questions about the procedures, regulations and practices that were in effect prior to when he took office on July thirty-first. While the details of a statistical report produced by Parchue on August thirteenth were discussed at length, there was no breaking news. Parchue stuck to his findings that one, no one had been granted nationality through the Belizean Economic Citizenship Programme after it was abolished in mid January, and two, during the investigation period, twelve hundred applications for Belizean nationality had been approved. Two points of interest that did break the monotony of the meeting was when the chairman of the panel, Ombudsman Paul Rodriguez, disclosed the contents of confidential memos which confirmed that even top brass in the police department felt that, given their limited resources, the so called “vetting” process was practically non-existent. And even more disturbingly, that the medical authorities expected to conduct AIDS tests for the applicants told Rodriguez that they were not equipped to properly certify the HIV. status of patients. But all this of course was before Parchue’s time, so he could not comment on those issues. And it’s still not certain when the man who should have the answers to those questions: former director of immigration, Paulino Castellanos, will take his turn behind the mike. Parchue did put in his two cents, based on consultations with senior staff, as to how the immigration department could insert integrity into the system. The recommendations include proposals to computerize the department for easy access to information; injecting life into the investigative branch of the department to do background checks; and improving training for immigration officers to help them resist intimidation by politicians. On Friday, Chief Executive Officer David Gibson and the former director of the BECIP program, Joey Belisle, are expected to appear before the commission.