“I believe the founding fathers are smiling from heaven” were the words uttered by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Chairman and Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit as he announced last evening that leaders have agreed to having free movement for all categories of people by March next year.
The announcement was met with cheers from the Caribbean leaders and diplomatic representatives present at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad for the closing news conference of the 45th Regular meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Chaguaramas being signed.
“Obviously there are some legal issues that we have to examine. And we have given our legal people, some months to examine those legal issues and to ensure that they can come to us by the 30th of March to take a definitive position on this,” Skerrit told reporters.
“Of course, we have this new security agreement in place already that governments can benefit from. But we believe this is the fundamental part of the integration architecture and at 50 we could not leave Trinidad and Tobago and not speak about the core of the individual movement, that is people’s ability to move freely within the Caribbean Community. And I think we would have served the community well at this meeting by arriving at that decision.”
Currently, university graduates, nurses, teachers, media workers, musicians, agriculture workers and private security officers are among the 12 categories of people eligible to seek employment in any of the countries that are part of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Skerrit said the expansion of free movement will not be extended to Haiti as Prime Minister, Dr Ariel Henry, asked for the French speaking island to be left out of the arrangement due to their humanitarian, social, security and political issues.
Current visa arrangements placed on Haitian nationals would also remain in place.
In addition to free movement, Skerrit said there would be “certain contingent rights” such as access to primary and emergency healthcare and free primary and secondary education.
Pressed further for details on the agreement, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said leaders are taking a cautious approach when agreeing to the minimum set of rights guaranteed to CARICOM citizens in an effort to prevent governments from being sued.
Mottley said leaders are looking at the CARICOM Development Fund to finance the changes to help guarantee that each country could bring its services up to a minimum level to support free movement.
She noted the present version of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas had certain principles that could make countries liable unless removed.
“During the pandemic, we had to carve out certain things. There were restrictions on movement for public health purposes—that was understood. The treaty provides for restrictions for national security purposes. The treaty provides for restrictions for balance of payments purposes. We have determined that in order to facilitate freedom of movement, we may have to do it in a way where we guarantee a minimum level of rights and that may relate to primary education as you heard Prime Minister Skerrit say. It may relate to Primary Health Care, it may relate to emergency health care, we are already covered with Social Security rights through the agreement that exists in CARICOM,” Mottley stated.
“So what we are doing is to ensure that the desire of heads is met by the reality of implementation and we give ourselves this period of time to be able to make the amendments to the treaty so that countries can do so without fear of any further recriminations.”
Mottley said the development is timely given the challenges that Caribbean countries facing a number of challenges that would require them to work together.
