TT is target for Caricom countries

THE EDITOR: The alacrity of Manning and other Heads of Governments in the Caribbean on the movement of skilled workers throughout the Caribbean is apparently misunderstood by the general population in TT as this present PNM administration has no time to explain anything to anybody.

The opposing political parties are only scratching the surface with reasons for this move — both in Parliament and on political platforms presently. The VIII Conference of Caribbean Economists to be held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in November this year has its agenda already prepared well in advance and will press heavily on the need for a proper migration policy for the Caribbean region as has been dictated by the political heads of Caribbean governments in their summit meeting in Jamaica recently. This will, obviously help to prop-up the Bill in our Parliament for the Free Movement of Skilled Workers and other categories within Caricom countries. While Caricom has been moribund for decades and pretty much a dead horse now (it has become an expensive talk-shop for regional politicians), other external agencies have taken up the slack from Caricom and continue to advise and force richer countries in Caricom like TT to accept skilled labour from the rest of the impoverished islands where the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues to decline and where the per capita income of both skilled and unskilled labour has always been low.

Governments in the past, bordering on dictatorship in countries like Jamaica, Antigua, Haiti, together with corruption and money-laundering are some of the reasons why these countries have not been able to successfully transfer their economies into progressive modes — apart from other things. TT has now become the target for other Caricom countries to take advantage of. Relatively high wages for labour (both skilled and unskilled when tied in with the US dollar) and a high standard of living with efficient delivery of goods and services in the private sector is very alluring to many politicians in the Caribbean basin, not to talk about all the oil and gas money that we always had since 1974. They have seen past PNM administrations fritter away billions of dollars and at one point even had deceased former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley comment that “oil money was flowing like salts” through TT under the patronage of Eric Williams. However public sector performance leaves much to be desired in TT and continues to be unproductive even when the gross national product (GNP) continues to grow because of the petrochemical input. Reform in the public sector is badly needed to solve this problem locally. Patrick Manning continues to take recommendations and be counselled by Barbados’ Prime Minister Owen Arthur who is the person in charge of the establishment of the Single Caricom Market and Economy (CSME) and his sidekick, Edwin Carrington, Caricom’s Secretary General, also operating from Barbados. These two gentlemen are very much appraised of our national wealth and now see TT ripe for the “picking” through the eyes of other Caricom leaders.

Enter Dr Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and now “PJ” Patterson, Prime Minister of Jamaica. The latter is on shaky ground politically because of Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) upset in the Local Government Elections and to help sort out his political decline has joined the bandwagon in pushing Manning to accede to their financial and migration demands regionally. The homicide numbers in Jamaica is over 450 killed presently! Together with the “jokers” above are some very influential organisations who would not leave us alone, and will continue to push for Caribbean integration, or in other words, when TT is flooded with other Caribbean immigrants. These are: The International Migration Policy (IMP), the International Organisation for Migration(IOM), the International Labour Office (ILO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Government of Jamaica, as well as other regional and international organisations and expert institutions. These organisations want to help stem the tide of migration to Western Europe and North America in light of the spread of HIV/AIDS, migrant smuggling (eg Chinese immigrant smuggling in TT), common migration interests between states regionally, and to look at the interplay between global, regional and national migration dynamics. These are only a few of the issues they are concerned about beside creating a new Immigrant Order to change up the population content of certain countries like TT which will be beneficial to specific ethnic based political parties like the PNM whose core supporters make up the major ethnic base throughout the Caribbean basin.

DR CHRIS MAHADEO
Port-of-Spain