The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has reaf­firmed its sup­port for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and the free move­ment of labour, fol­low­ing high-lev­el talks be­tween the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the pri­vate sec­tor group.

In a meet­ing last week Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der met with T&T Cham­ber pres­i­dent Son­ji Pierre-Chase to dis­cuss a range of na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing crime pre­ven­tion, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, and re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

The cham­ber said it was en­cour­aged by the Min­is­ter’s open­ness to di­a­logue, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to deep­en­ing re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment, both par­ties recog­nised the im­por­tance of en­abling the free and se­cure move­ment of skilled labour across Cari­com mem­ber states, in line with T&T’s long­stand­ing treaty oblig­a­tions.

“The fa­cil­i­ta­tion of re­gion­al labour mo­bil­i­ty is crit­i­cal not just for eco­nom­ic growth, but for un­lock­ing shared op­por­tu­ni­ty across the Caribbean,” the Cham­ber said. “It is es­sen­tial that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­works sup­port not hin­der the le­gal move­ment of peo­ple who con­tribute to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, and re­gion­al re­silience.”
The meet­ing al­so ad­dressed im­mi­gra­tion mat­ters tied to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion un­der the CSME.

The cham­ber called for greater recog­ni­tion of the rights of hold­ers of valid CSME skills cer­tifi­cates, stat­ing that such in­di­vid­u­als are en­ti­tled to en­try and em­ploy­ment with­out the need for a work per­mit.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion reaf­firmed its sup­port for the full and free move­ment of skilled labour with­in the re­gion and ad­vo­cat­ed for the swift adop­tion of pa­per­less im­mi­gra­tion land­ing forms as part of the coun­try’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da.

On mat­ters of com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, the cham­ber ex­pressed its in­ten­tion to strength­en its ex­ist­ing Neigh­bour­hood Crime Watch Pro­gramme in part­ner­ship with the E999 Unit. The on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Crime Stop­pers was al­so ac­knowl­edged as a vi­tal com­po­nent of com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty.

The cham­ber al­so pledged its sup­port for the min­istry’s pro­posed youth men­tor­ship pro­gramme, which aims to di­vert at-risk youth from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty by of­fer­ing guid­ance, struc­ture, and life skills train­ing.

Speak­ing af­ter the meet­ing, Pierre-Chase said, “I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with Alexan­der, and I am op­ti­mistic about the ini­tia­tives we dis­cussed. The T&T Cham­ber, through our crime and jus­tice com­mit­tee, re­mains com­mit­ted to part­ner­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a safer, more se­cure en­vi­ron­ment in which busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties can thrive.”

The cham­ber said it would con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for poli­cies that not on­ly en­hance na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty but al­so stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, en­sure greater ef­fi­cien­cy at ports, and sup­port re­gion­al mo­bil­i­ty through mean­ing­ful CSME im­ple­men­ta­tion.