Leaders agree to action after talks

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders Wednesday committed to taking decisive action to tackle pressing issues facing the regional integration movement.

Barbados Prime Minister and CARICOM chairman Mia Mottley, who delivered an upbeat report at a news conference at the end of the 31st Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government last evening, said during their deliberations in Bridgetown, leaders had been able to “continue to advance the work of the region to the benefit of Caribbean people”.

“This conference will come to be remembered as one in which we laid the footsteps for a number of key decisions,” she said, stressing that many of these decisions “must have relevance to our people”.

She said she regards as one of the most significant initiative benefitting Caribbean people, the work undertaken by Grenada’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell regarding roaming charges across the region. A new fixed single CARICOM roaming rate will be introduced sometime this year.

“The conference has agreed that Prime Minister Mitchell’s technical committee will now meet with the telecommunication companies and we will await the final implementation of the regime as well as the other areas of digital governance which Prime Minister Mitchell has responsibility,” she reported.

Meanwhile, the Barbadian leader assured that efforts to strengthen the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) which allows for the free movement of people across the 15-nation bloc, would not wane.

She said regional leaders has set out a plant to enhance the governance mechanisms.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has been tasked to pull on the technical working groups whose recommendations may have to be revisited again, “because of the need for us to guarantee implementation across all the member states,” Mottley said.

“To that extent, therefore, we anticipate that a report will come to the next Heads of Government meeting that will review those technical working groups that came out of the Rose Hall Declaration in Montego Bay in 2003.”

She added that the leaders have also asked Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who has lead responsibility for free movement within the quasi-CARICOM Cabinet, to “bring back up a review of all of the processes to further simplify how people move and whether there should be further categories of persons who should be allowed to move….”

Prime Minister Mottley said she expects the report will be presented to regional leaders at their annual summit in July.