Axe CARICOM skills certificate – UWI lecturer

International relations expert Senator Dr Kristina Hinds is calling for an end to the CARICOM Skills Certificate which, in her opinion, is an unnecessary barrier to the free movement of people within the region.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, the senior University of the West Indies lecturer described the policy as “elitist” despite efforts to include a greater cross section of skills within the region. She said the exclusion of potential workers interested in so-called unskilled jobs has contributed in large part to the type of treatment meted out to some people at ports of entry across the region.

“I don’t believe in it,” Dr Hinds said of the certificate.

“I think that if you are a citizen of a CARICOM member state, you should be able to pick up and go. You don’t need to show any skills certificate. That means if you are a housekeeper or a babysitter and you don’t have any kind of certification, no matter what you do, you should be able to move across the region.

“As much as it offers opportunities and although the number of skills has been broadened, it is still restrictive and it continues to make certain people illegal,” she lamented.

The academic said in many cases, people in search of greener pastures are criminalised because they don’t fit into the narrow categories of the CARICOM requirement. She suggested regional leaders take the proverbial leaf out of the European Union’s book which allows citizens of EU member states to move freely.

“You don’t have to prove that you have a skill as a housekeeper, you don’t have to prove that you have a skill as a babysitter or that you have a university education,” said Dr Hinds.

“Part of the issue is the policy that we have in place that criminalises people for looking to move somewhere else and work as an economic driver as people would call it. If regionalism is supposed to benefit people, then they should be able to move, they should be able to respond to demands across the region in the labour market.

“If there is a demand for attorneys in Belize for instance, the many attorneys that we put out in Barbados should be able to go to Belize and work easily and they can do that. But on the lower end of the strata, it doesn’t work so easily. I think that is part of the reason why you found people on the ‘Guyanese bench’ [a place where non-nationals are reportedly detained at the airport] and so on and Jamaicans will have similar complaints as well about being targeted and searched and so on,” she added. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb