The Trinidad and Tobago government Monday dismissed “scaremongering” tactics of the main opposition United National Congress (UNC) and re-stated its commitment to the regional integration movement (CARICOM).
“CARICOM is not the problem; it is the solution to the problem,” CARICOM and Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. Amery Browne told a news conference as he responded to UNC criticism over the government’s move to table the Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals)(Amendment) Bill, 2022, which is now before the Senate.
Opposition Senator Wade Mark, a former speaker of the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament, has likened the amendment to efforts by the government to engage in voter padding ahead of the next general election, constitutionally due here by 2025.
Further, Mark claimed in the Senate that while the UNC has no objection in principle to the free movement of skilled labor throughout the Caribbean, Trinidad, and Tobago is experiencing high levels of unemployment with as many as 170,000 people on the unemployment line.
“We must put the national interest first. We must see about our people who are unemployed first,” asking whether there had been any consultation with the labor movement or civil society about the bill.
“We are not ready for this,” he added.
But Browne told reporters that “it is said in 2022 I have to educate and inform a UNC senator on the basics of the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy) and this is not Ph.D. level my friend, this is elementary, this is Standard One level and the lesson to the thinking citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, don’t listen to the anti-regionalist who wants to take us back to the past.
“Our very survival and future of CARICOM are in our hands. Our survival, our future is in CARICOM,” Browne said.
The CSME is an arrangement among the 15-member CARICOM member states to create a single enlarged economic space by removing restrictions resulting in the free movement of goods, services, persons, capital, and technology.
The decision, in 1989, to establish the CSME was regarded as a move to deepen the integration movement to better respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by globalization.
Browne told reporters that the amendment before the Parliament is intended to achieve several things, ensuring that Trinidad and Tobago meets its obligations under the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs the regional integration movement.
“Also, we must expand opportunities for our people, Trinidad and Tobago nationals to seek employment and to live in participating CARICOM member states. Our people will now access a larger market for jobs, investment, and business opportunities.
“More skilled people will now have larger doors to move through and to take full advantage of a regional single economy and market. Also, we will be rectifying an asymmetry whereby Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been at a disadvantage…as our country has been unable to accept applications for professional certificates in several additional categories until we have had legislation to do so.”
Browne told reporters that the legislation is now being out in place “which will empower our citizens to move and operate in 10 categories as opposed to five”,
He said the legislation amendments also seek to support the repeated calls from the private sector locally and regionally for “free and uninhibited movement so that skills can flow to where they are needed most for our businesses to grow and be competitive on the global scale.”
He said the legislation would also be beneficial to Caribbean people in the diaspora wishing to region to region armed with much-needed skills for the socio-economic development of the Caribbean.
The opposition has claimed that the legislation will allow Caribbean nationals to vote in Trinidad and Tobago, urging the Keith Rowley administration to withdraw the legislation.
“The reality is all you have to do is to call the EBC (Elections and Boundaries Commission)…and to realize that the talk of voter padding is just intellectual rhetoric …all he had to do is call the EBC to find out what are the requirements for someone to become a voter in Trinidad and Tobago.
“It has nothing to do with a one-year skills certificate requirement; it has nothing to do with the ten categories (of skilled workers) that we are mobilizing. The requirement for voting in Trinidad and Tobago occurs over a much longer timeframe. There is a five-year residence requirement that did not arise yesterday, that has been in place for years”,
Browne reiterated the need for Trinidad and Tobago’s involvement in CARICOM and especially the CSME, “one economy, one CARICOM which benefits all of us.
“This is the only way in which our country or countries and our region can survive in the modern age. Can be competitive in the modern age and can make the best use of all our skills, all our resources, and all our people.”
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