The read­er could there­fore con­clude that it is on­ly when such com­mu­ni­ca­tion ve­hi­cles are es­tab­lished, fund­ed by and with the as­sis­tance of out­side gov­ern­ments and broad­cast­ers can there be a qual­i­ty ra­dio ser­vice which links the peo­ple of the re­gion. It is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble that there could be a Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty seek­ing to link the economies, so­ci­eties and peo­ples of the re­gion with­out a func­tion­ing dai­ly ra­dio ser­vice con­vey­ing news, opin­ion and pro­vid­ing a plat­form for cul­tur­al and artis­tic ex­pres­sion.

There­fore, the clo­sure of the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice must be seen as a re­al chal­lenge for the gov­ern­ments, peo­ples, in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of the Caribbean. We can­not on the one hand urge against colo­nial hang­overs and then the next day call for the British Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple to con­tin­ue or­gan­is­ing, fund­ing and op­er­a­tional­is­ing the ra­dio ser­vice in­form­ing us about our­selves. The re­gion must learn to sur­vive based on its own re­sources and ef­fort; the time for wait­ing for oth­ers to do what we should do for our­selves has gone and if the Caribbean is to ever ful­ly emerge as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion in the fam­i­ly of na­tions, a re­gion­al broad­cast ser­vice is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial.

Giv­en the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty, we rec­om­mend that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go takes the lead in im­me­di­ate­ly com­mis­sion­ing an as­sess­ment of the fea­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing a re­gion­al ra­dio net­work, based in Port-of-Spain, whose aim would be to en­sure that Caribbean peo­ple are kept in­formed about what's hap­pen­ing in the re­gion.

In prop­a­gat­ing this idea, the Gov­ern­ment must seek to en­gage all Cari­com states in the ef­fort and should be pre­pared to take the lead, as well, in spon­sor­ing the start-up of this no­ble ven­ture-per­haps us­ing the mod­el of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice Trust Fund as a means of in­su­lat­ing the net­work from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence or fi­nan­cial de­pri­va­tion.