| By Tusika MartinThe crisis that is unfolding in the Caribbean will test the people of the Caribbean as never before, former Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur said on Friday.He noted, like in many other cases when the region was faced with a crisis, the people of the Caribbean will find a way through.“The great strength that integration should serve to diffuse throughout the Caribbean is the possibility it creates for the use of its greatest and most abundant resources, which are the talents of our people.”This, he told the gathering at Pegasus on Friday night to mark the 104th Anniversary of the Rotary Club, can be used in a creative way, and in a manner that corrects centuries of a tortured and divided history.The former Barbados Prime Minister explained that indeed, if economic integration is to become a strong force to drive Caribbean development, and is to be the means by which the region inserts the regional economy into the global economy, that process must involve the building of strong and competitive enterprises.“The Caribbean has never realised its developmental potential in large measure, because we have never succeeded in putting the creative imagination of our people fully to work on the region’s behalf.”The creative imagination is the region’s richest resource and should be liberated for the Caribbean to progress, Arthur added.According to Arthur, the Treaty of Chaguaramas of 1973 establishing the Caribbean Community failed to accept this principle.“The founding fathers of Caricom committed our region to a less favourable regime for the movement of its people than that which obtained under colonial rule.”The initiative to create a Single Caribbean Market and Economy seeks to institutionalise labour mobility as one of the crucial elements of the process, he added.An argument has recently been advanced that the labour mobility aspect of the CSME should be revamped because of the strain it is imposing on the social system of some countries.If labour mobility should be undertaken in a manner that does not impose on any nation a greater strain than its resources are able to support, he explained, then effect should be given to implement the work of the Task Force on Functional Co-operation in Caricom, which was established in 2007 precisely to address this issue in a positive way.“That positive way is to make the provision of common services, the coherent development of our social services, and the sharing of the benefits of such development as much a part of our contemporary integration exercise as the creation of the CSME itself. Another positive way is for the region to define and implement a decent work programme and agenda so that labour mobility leads to economic and social progress everywhere.An additional positive way is for us to agree on a policy in respect of the contingent that is to be associated with labour mobility, and to implement that in a sensitive and coherent manner.”This, he said, would ensure that as citizens move across the region for employment they will do so in an environment within which the social benefits to which they are entitled in any one place are clearly defined and known to all.It is therefore a significant failure of regional leadership not to have the Regional Financial Services Agreement in place to provide for the orderly development and operation of the regional financial sector, Arthur explained.Supporting the recently signed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, Arthur said that this recognises an important new development ground for the Caribbean.In that EPA, the EU has agreed to a regime for the temporary movement of natural persons from the Caribbean to its markets.These include self-employed persons, cultural workers, entertainers and professionals of various categories.Europe, he added, has agreed to grant Caribbean nations access to its markets on terms which are more favourable than it has agreed to in its global dealings under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) or in any of its bilateral relations.The former Barbadian Prime Minister added that this major concession, which in large measure gives the EPA some of its worth to the region, is a possible instrument for Caribbean development.“It seems to me therefore to be a sharp contradiction and, quite frankly, an expression of backwardness for anyone to salute the extent of the provision for labour mobility that we have managed to secure in the EPA.”Whether it be in relation to the CSME, the negotiation of an EPA with the EU, the forthcoming negotiations with Canada, or in any of the region’s global relations, the Caribbean needs to ‘stop doubting ourselves’.Only recently, the Caricom Secretariat had moved to ensure urgent implementation of the EPA.In keeping with the directive of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, the Secretariat has established a Unit to coordinate the implementation of the Agreement, which was signed in October last year by the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the EC.One of the early exercises to be undertaken by the Unit will be the listing of the obligations which fall to CARIFORUM as a group and also those to be undertaken by CARIFORUM States individually.Only recently the EPA was the subject of discussion at the 3rd Regional Meeting of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly.Topping the agenda during the four-day meeting was the Economic Partnership Agreement, the global financial crisis and climate change.During the opening of that meeting, Acting Co-President of the ACP-EU Joint Parliament Assembly, Otmar Rodgers, said that the developments and social challenges that conflict the world today can only be addressed in an atmosphere of international understanding and cooperation.In the last two decades, the impact of globalisation has taken a new dimension, he explained, adding that there has been a market emphasis in regional integration and bilateral trade agreements as a means of achieving and coordinating development objectives at regional level.Globalisation and regional agreements, Rodgers said,Cheap Jerseys From China, have social and economic consequences on individual nation states to the extent that they affect the work of legislative bodies as well as individual parliamentarians.“This is why I believe that it is important for parliamentarians to debate these issues, and by doing so can contribute in finding solutions that improve the livelihood of our people.”The delegates will consider a report that addresses this controversy by identifying, on the one hand, the financial costs of dealing with the adjustment and implementation costs of the EPA (focusing on Barbados, Guyana, and Suriname) and, on the other hand, the financial resources made available already by the European Commission (EC) and the Member States and those that will be made available in future.The report discusses the challenges of delivering aid, and the efforts that the region has already undertaken to coordinate EPA-related funding activities.On the basis of this evidence, the report assesses the adequacy of the development chapter of the EPA, and recommends how to enhance its effective implementation.Participants included Parliamentary representatives from the European Union, and from the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries.Guyana’s delegation was led by Donald Ramotar of the People’s Progressive Party and included members of the Parliamentary Opposition. |
