An­na-Lisa Paul

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day un­der­scored the im­por­tance of air and mar­itime con­nec­tiv­i­ty through­out the Caribbean, as he ad­mit­ted that the re­gion was not where it need­ed to be re­gard­ing this im­por­tant as­pect of de­vel­op­ment.

De­liv­er­ing brief re­marks at the 24th meet­ing of the Spe­cial Com­mit­tee of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS) at the ACS Sec­re­tari­at, Sweet Bri­ar Road, Port-of-Spain, Hinds said while the ACS had some oblig­a­tions to ful­fil re­gard­ing this, they had not yet man­aged to ful­ly re­solve the is­sue.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the work of the ACS to ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing small-is­land de­vel­op­ing states, Hinds pledged his com­mit­ment to work with the ACS as they de­vised strate­gies to strength­en port op­er­a­tions, im­prove man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty, in­crease lo­gis­ti­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty, and en­hance trade re­gion­al­ly.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, Hinds sought to make it clear that his com­ments were not re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to T&T.

In­stead, he ex­plained, the is­sue of air and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty had be­come more rel­e­vant glob­al­ly as gov­ern­ments were ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tives to di­ver­si­fy their economies away from the oil and gas sec­tor.

Adding that an ex­pan­sion of the tourism in­dus­try could re­sult in the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 220,000,000 re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion in­creas­ing their trav­el, ne­ces­si­tat­ing greater air and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty, Hinds said: "It is a feel­ing, from what I have read, that our per­for­mance in this re­gard is not al­to­geth­er where it ought to be."

He con­tin­ued: "In oth­er words, we need to step it up, so we have a lot of work ahead as a peo­ple."

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's meet­ing, ACS Di­rec­tor of Trans­port and Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion, George Nichol­son, pre­sent­ed a re­port on the ac­tiv­i­ties com­plet­ed dur­ing the past year, as well as a sta­tus up­date on new projects, up­com­ing ini­tia­tives and col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts which are cur­rent­ly un­der­way.

Al­so dur­ing the meet­ing, the ACS was ex­pect­ed to sign the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Port Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of the Caribbean (PMAC), as they seek to strength­en re­la­tions and im­prove de­vel­op­ment among ports in the greater Caribbean re­gion.

ACS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Am­bas­sador Al­fon­so Munera Cava­dia, said while achiev­ing re­gion­al air and mar­itime con­nec­tiv­i­ty was one of their main ob­jec­tives, it was not an eas­i­ly at­tain­able goal.

Re­veal­ing that the ACS would be host­ing a meet­ing in No­vem­ber to dis­cuss the top­ic, which ex­perts from around the Caribbean had been in­vit­ed to at­tend, Cava­dia said: "We need to put to­geth­er re­al and pos­si­ble ac­tions that go be­yond good in­ten­tions.

"We need to iden­ti­fy what gov­ern­ments need to do, what the pri­vate sec­tor needs to do, what in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions can do and what donor coun­tries can do.

"We need to cov­er some ground, put to­geth­er re­al and tan­gi­ble so­lu­tions in the short and medi­um term but we can­not for­get about the ob­jec­tive of achiev­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty."