Blanket of secrecy shrouds CSME
A shroud of secrecy has engulfed the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
It is impossible to find out how the arrangement is working: how many people have applied for and received jobs in the various Caribbean countries, the snags and in the process and whether some governments are not cooperating.
There is evidence to suggest that the Trinidad and Tobago Government and maybe even other Caribbean Governments are deliberately making it difficult to get information on the integration process.
Over the last month, efforts by Tntinsider to get information on the level of migration under the provisions of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) have yielded nothing.
At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ stately offices at Knowsley Castle, Port-of-Spain, staff could answer no questions on the CSME. The telephone number for a so-called “CSME Unit” listed in the local telephone directory’s “blue pages” was not in service. Inquiries at the ministry’s office led to instructions to “write to the Ministry’s Director of Caricom and Caribbean Affairs” for any information on the CSME. Attempts to reach the individual holding this position through the ministry’s regular telephone lines were also futile.
The internet also offered little or no up-to-date information in Caricom on the CSME. The Caricom Secretariat website needs to be updated more regularly, and the webmasters at the Secretariat’s Georgetown, Guyana, offices could consider expanding the site by going deeper into the minds of the region’s people and sharing information on how ordinary men, women, and children all over the Caribbean feel about the process of integration.
Professionals such as doctors, engineers, teachers, journalists and the like are guaranteed freedom of movement and, according to the CSME protocol must apply to a Caribbean country to be granted permission to work and live there without a work permit.
It is understood that in the first six months of 2006, this country granted over 700 such approvals but no other information has been forthcoming.
Despite the dearth of information on the progress of the CSME, casual observation would reveal that the process is well under way: Accents from almost every Caribbean territory could be heard among the chatter in Port-of-Spain’s downtown streets.
Guyanese traders, a feature of life in downtown Port of Spain for more than a decade, are now entering the realm of store proprietors, as many have worked and saved enough to rent shop space and set up well stocked clothing and variety stores.
Caricom citizens from other territories are now joining their fellow Caricom traders from Guyana. One POS shopper estimated that as many as 60 percent of all non-food vendors in Port of Spain are either Caricom migrants or immigrants from Africa.
As for labour, one of the first steps in the establishment of the CSME was the removal of restrictions for certain classes of skilled workers, which after more than 30 years of backsliding on integration, was finally agreed to by Caribbean governments in 2004.
The CSME came into being in the more developed territories – Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica in January 2006 – and in the less developed territories one year later.
Since then, there has been a slow but steady stream of migrants moving between the islands in search of better opportunities than those available in their home states.
Needless to say, there has always been such movement between the islands: Unskilled migrants seeking better wages and quality education for their children, university graduates taking up high paying but hard-to-fill positions, tradesmen and construction workers migrating to wherever there is a construction boom, and vendors from the smaller islands seeking to sell their produce in the cities of the larger islands.
This tradition of migration within the islands has been taking place even before the arrival of Cristopher Columbus: Caribs and other tribes moved freely from island to island as they searched for better lands and raided each other’s settlements. In those days, there were no prime ministers or immigration authorities to slap visa restrictions on migrants.
History has proven that no regime could put a stop to these migrations, not the colonial administrations, not the independent governments of today, and not even the totalitarian regime of Cuba, where boatloads of Cubans still risk their lives to get to nearby Florida in search of a better life.
The Caribbean’s people have always been miles ahead of its governments in almost every aspect of Caribbean life.
However, some issues are simply too important for large blocks of the population to be left out of the loop. The time may be right for Caribbean people to start demanding more information and action on integration from their leaders.