Dear Editor,
A letter from Ray Chickrie in you edition of August 26 highlights a discomfiture all Guyanese passport holders suffer. He refers to the need to seek visas to visit many African countries.
In fact our Foreign Affairs Ministry has to address with urgency the fact that Guyanese need visas to go to most third world countries, even though the consular issue is unresolved. We have few consulates and the question of reciprocity, where we offer visa-free and the other party does the same, is a question of persistence and paperwork.
The diplomacy has, traditionally, been spent on economic matters and it is great to have heard that Carl Greenidge will strengthen this, but the ideological and other issues from Non-Aligned and Cold War days, seem to have left us with the anachronisms we live.
You need visas to go almost everywhere.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
