Over 200 Haitian migrant workers this week received Temporary Worker Permit Identity Cards from the Dominican Republic’s General Directorate of Migration (DGM) as part of ongoing efforts to increase the government’s capacity to process labour migrants.

These workers, previously vulnerable migrants will now be able to cross the border into Haiti and back to the Dominican Republic at no charge, and move freely within the Dominican Republic.

"Along with their employers, this first group of Haitian labour migrants have taken an essential step towards their registration as foreign temporary workers in the Dominican Republic’s social security system. Among the group are 146 of the first labour migrants granted visas and admitted into the country on 6 January 6, 2011," declared Cy Winter, IOM’s Chief of Mission in the Dominican Republic.

In order to ensure that the group were back at work on Monday morning, IOM and DGM provided transport on Sunday from the country’s northern border to the capital, Santo Domingo, where the workers received their identify cards, the final step of their regularization into the Dominican work force.

An IOM labour migration expert supervised the process and provided recommendations to the government partners.

Since the signing of the Migration Regulation, IOM’s Dominican government counterparts have worked tirelessly to increase their capacity to process labour migrants.

But, numerous challenges remain in building their capacity to register, assess and document the hundreds of thousands of labour migrants needed to support the Dominican economy, especially in the agricultural and construction sectors.

"The process requires inter-agency alliances to tackle the complexities of labour migration, starting by determining the national labour sector needs, interfacing biometric registration with an electronic database supported process, and establishing online reporting controls, along with crucial adjustments to policies and procedures. All in concert with a private sector clamouring for workers and needing to meet deadlines," added Winter.

The initiative has received funding from the IOM Migration Development Fund, as well as the Canadian and United States governments.

HL/ HaitiLibre