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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Free movement issue tops CSME meeting

by

20091014

GEORGE­TOWN–The free move­ment of labour and goods, re­duc­tion of the food im­port bill, and strate­gies to en­sure the gen­er­al pub­lic's ef­fec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) were among the key is­sues raised at an open fo­rum of the Con­vo­ca­tion on the CSME held in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

The fo­rum on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon brought the cur­tain down on the two-day con­vo­ca­tion at the Lloyd Er­sk­ine San­di­ford Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, which was held to re­ceive a re­port of an au­dit of the sta­tus of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CSME.

The au­dit was man­dat­ed by the Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment, four of whom were at the con­vo­ca­tion–David Thomp­son, Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and Lead Head of Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the CSME; Bald­win Spencer, Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da; and Ralph Gon­salves, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Patrick Man­ning, Prime Min­is­ter of T&T.

The fo­rum, which last­ed for more than two hours, ben­e­fit­ted from ro­bust in­ter­ac­tion among the heads of gov­ern­ment, min­is­ters, re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions and or­gan­i­sa­tions, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il so­ci­ety, the labour union, the pri­vate sec­tor and the me­dia.

In par­tic­u­lar, the free move­ment of labour and the at­ten­dant con­se­quences for mem­ber states emerged ar­guably as one of the more press­ing is­sues at the con­vo­ca­tion.

CSME, a thorny is­sue

Char­ac­terised from the floor al­ter­na­tive­ly as the "feel of the CSME" and a "thorny is­sue," the free move­ment of labour el­e­ment of the Com­mu­ni­ty's flag­ship pro­gramme elicit­ed sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions. They ranged from the es­tab­lish­ment of a labour mar­ket in­for­ma­tion sys­tem and a so­cial wel­fare sta­bil­i­sa­tion pro­gramme to the full ex­plo­ration of lifestyle and de­mo­graph­ic changes that would be wrought by the free move­ment of peo­ple.

The labour move­ment, which was well rep­re­sent­ed at the con­vo­ca­tion, re­it­er­at­ed its sup­port and com­mit­ment to the CSME and rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­gion­al labour mar­ket in­for­ma­tion sys­tem so that the Com­mu­ni­ty could be ad­e­quate­ly in­formed about em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and oth­er per­ti­nent da­ta from which res­i­dents could make in­formed de­ci­sions. The time ripe for such a re­gion­al fa­cil­i­ty, the trade unions ar­gued.

Di­a­logue and dis­cus­sion be­tween gov­ern­ments and labour were al­so crit­i­cal to progress with­in the CSME, the trade unions stressed, and sug­gest­ed that re­gion­al tri­par­tite con­sul­ta­tion com­mit­tee fo­rum be set up aimed at pro­mot­ing and mon­i­tor­ing reg­u­la­to­ry labour mar­ket de­vel­op­ments at the re­gion­al lev­el, sug­gest­ing ar­eas for im­prove­ment and ad­vis­ing on strength­en­ing so­cial cap­i­tal.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty ex­pressed con­cern about the like­ly change in the de­mo­graph­ics of mem­ber states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the East­ern Caribbean that may oc­cur from the free move­ment of peo­ple in the re­gion.

The re­gion must be able to ad­dress those facts head-on and un­til such time as the ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with the CSME are firm­ly ven­ti­lat­ed and un­der­stood, there will al­ways be ob­jec­tions, Robert LeHunte, the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of In­dige­nous Bankers rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said.

"Life as they know it with those changes will not be the same and peo­ple must be aware of that," he said.

He was al­so of the view it was im­por­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty to un­der­stand the ben­e­fits of po­lit­i­cal union.

"We are miss­ing some of those is­sues...; the pol­i­tics of fear can take us that far, but the pol­i­tics of in­clu­sion is al­so im­por­tant," he said, while un­der­scor­ing the goals and ideals of the CSME would not be achieved un­less there was a mech­a­nism for cor­po­rate gov­er­nance that was not pos­si­ble with­out po­lit­i­cal union.


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