Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who was so precise in condemning, a week ago, the execution of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi as an affront to the rule of law in any civilized society, has now raised the equally sensitive issue of Caribbean people’s reservations about the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
In delivering the first David Thompson Memorial Lecture in Barbados last Thursday, the Dominican leader alluded to the lingering wariness among citizens of CARICOM about the “viability” of the regional economic enterprise.
“Sadly, it appears,” he said, “that in spite of over 40 years of work by governments and a generation of CARIFTA [Caribbean Free Trade Area] and CARICOM, enough progress has not been seen to be done so as to convince the mass of our people that this is truly a viable enterprise . . . .”
This point, though it remains troubling, is certainly not new.
However, quite revealing was his report on a study carried out by the Georgetown-based CARICOM Secretariat between June 2009 and June 2010, which shows that of the 85 000 work permits issued between 2000 and June 2010, 63 750 were to nationals of third countries (non-CARICOM citizens).
Simply put, this new research shows that foreign nationals are finding and accessing more job opportunities in CARICOM than our own regional brothers and sisters.
It begs the question: where are we really going as a Community? And as lead prime minister with lead responsibility for “Labour – including intra-Community movement of skills”, does Skerrit, along with his CARICOM colleagues, actually intend to address this situation?
On the surface of it, it could suggest that we are not very welcoming of our own. It also certainly does not help in combating the perception that CARICOM is all talk and no action.
While Prime Minister Skerrit in his lecture would have hinted at the shortcomings of an administrative bureaucracy at the regional Community Secretariat, we believe that the growing reservation about CARICOM has much more to do with the lack of commitment to the implementation of policies and programmes by the political directorate itself of the now 38-year-old economic grouping.
The difficulty of moving around intra-regionally to live and work, with its several problems, including the hostility many too often encounter at ports of entry, is one of the critical issues that have contributed to the prevailing cynicism and disenchantment with CARICOM.
Perhaps our leaders can start by sticking to the already approved commitments in this area. Then we may succeed at least in diminishing some of the negativity surrounding the CARICOM enterprise.
