Regional bodies unhappy with EPA

The document will be prepared by a regional civil society workshop led by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and Non- Governmental Organisations (FITUN). Several regional NGOs and local trade unions under FITUN yesterday picketed outside Whitehall yesterday to let regional governments know of their dissatisfaction and opposition to the EPA in its present form.

They also voiced their dissatisfaction outside the EU offices at Queen’s Park West.

The demonstration was the first activity organised by the group. Today they are expected to discuss aspects of the EPA which they believe are particularly detrimental to the region.

FITUN President David Abdulah said, “The EPA is going to have a negative impact on Caribbean countries, economies, on the citizens, farmers, farm workers, fisher folk, women, young people, the ordinary citizens of Caribbean countries.” He said Government supported the EPA and Trade and Industry Minister Lenny Saith went on record to say that the EPA was “the best thing since sliced bread.” “Well sliced bread is not good for you. If you eat too much of it, you get all sorts of illnesses. Similarly with the EPA if we are lucky, it will leave us in a badly injured state, if we are unlucky, it will cause death and destruction in the Caribbean,” he said.

Shantel Munro Knight, a representative of the Caribbean Policy Development Centre of Barbados, one of the workshop’s organisers, said the EPA could not go forward as the Caribbean people did not know the contents of the agreement.

She said regional governments were representing the people and if the general public did not agree to the EPA, it should be stopped.