Thank you, St Lucia!

CASTRIES, July 7 - More than 40 participants from St Lucia's labour market, from professional organisations, artists groups, artisans, media workers, trade unions to civil servants, came together at the Bay Gardens Hotel in Rodney Bay on June 30 for a national consultation on the CSME.  

The first of five national consultations to gauge labour market perceptions of the single market yielded valuable information and sent strong messages that will be passed on to the CARICOM Secretariat. More importantly, the talks contributed to a greater understanding of the CSME among many participants. The participants also took a long hard look not just at CARICOM but at themselves as Community citizens and at their governments, past and present. 

Time and again, many of the issues raised in group discussion among various representative bodies had less to do with communication and information gaps and more to do with the process by which skilled nationals begin the process of moving freely through the region. The need to acquire a national certificate in every country in which one works appears to be a frustrating and confusing process.

The time lag between the taking of decisions by the leaders and their ratification by national legislation and regulations came in for particular scrutiny, as did the need for professionals and skilled workers from various groups to come together and strengthen their own organisations so that they could take further advantage of all the CSME has to offer.

Architects: Not yet level playing field

They are still perceived inequities. CARICOM-registered Barbadian architects can move freely into the local market to compete with St Lucian architects who cannot in turn move as freely into Barbados, unless they are registered with the Barbadian architects guild and are effectively licensed, as the law there requires. This is because the law governing architects has not, in their view, changed to reflect the spirit and intention of the CSME. A similar situation had existed in Jamaica. So the playing field, at least for one group in the labour market, is not yet level.

For its own part, St Lucia needs to pass into law the Free Movement of Factors Bill, which gives effect to many of the provisions of the CSME, the participants noted. They were concerned that while the Ministry of Commerce was the focal point for the CSME, the authority for issuing CARICOM Skilled National Certificates was the Ministry of External Affairs which, in their view, had no mechanism for validating and verifying an applicants' qualifications. The absence of an effective department in the Ministry of Education for accrediting qualifications and educational institutions was seen as an impediment to the effective functioning of the skilled nationals regime in St Lucia.

Representatives from St Lucia's growing cultural industries gave valuable insights and learned much from the half-day dialogue, among them the famed guitarist, songwriter and architect, Gene Lawrence (second from left) and Steve Etienne (right), general manager of the Eastern Caribbean copyright collective, ECCO, which represents the interests of Eastern Caribbean composers, arrangers, producers and performers.

The consultation proved to be as much an information-sharing process as an information-gathering one. Says famed guitarist-cum-architect Gene Lawrence: "I would say ninety per cent of my questions have already been answered. And it shows that I had a lack of information... I am happy to say that, yes, we are much more aware now of the CSME ... what we could gain from (it) and how we could gain." His local collective represents some 300 artistes in St Lucia and the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights (ECCO) stands for some 3000 music-makers in the Eastern Caribbean.


The extent to which workers across the region take advantage of the CSME is linked not only to their knowledge of the provisions of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, CARICOM's own constitution that governs the CSME, but to their own ability to organise into effective institutions that represent their interests. Very many artistes in the Caribbean would rather pay a work permit fee than register as a CARICOM Skilled National. It's just too much of a hassle, they opine. Yet, they complain about the standard and quality of competing artistes from other countries. At the national consultations, a number of the participants recognised the value of joining together in an effective coalition to arrange, for example, mass registrations of members.


Thanks, Titus!

The research team says a big "thank you" to Titus Preville (right), Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, who was once PS in the Ministry of Commerce, and St Lucia's resident CSME guru. Mr. Preville gave valuable insight into the workings of the CSME from a St Lucia perspective, identifying some of the key outstanding issues in implementing the CSME locally. He suggested the ways in which more St Lucians can use the single market to their advantage.  


He made the telling point that CSME was the foundation for St Lucia's access to European markets through the EU-CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement; so the extent our own domestic arrangements are in disarray is the extent to which the region in general, and his country more particularly, would remain ill-prepared to leverage greater market access to the EU. In the view of many participants, CARICOM people and governements seem to reserve their heaviest control and toughest restrictions for their own goods and labour while at the same time looking outward to conquer new markets through fresh trade and economic partnership deals.


Mr. Preville also chaired a separate consultation with facilitators in the St Lucian government - the officials responsible for immigration, work permits and CSME matters the day before the national consultation. That event yielded important information on how civil servants in Castries view the CSME.

"Knowledge is power" and through the group discussions, questionnaires and debate that ensued (at left: artisans and craftspeople), the participants who representative the stakeholders in St Lucia's labour market and services trade empowered themselves to demand more of themselves, their government and CARICOM, to make the CSME work for them.


CSME 'elitist'?
A national consultation, which began with notions of the CSME being an elitist institution that catered only to the needs of university graduates, ended with the realisation that the categories of skilled workers had already governed a wide variety of people - from bakers and hairdressers to technicians and managers. Artisans and craft vendors began to see opportunities in setting up businesses in neighbouring CARICOM states through the CSME's Right of Establishment provision and the rights that all self-employed CARICOM people have to provide services in any CSME member state. One participant even saw an opportunity to become the sole distributor for a branded food product from another CARICOM state. The talks in St Lucia also touched on a number of related, real-world issues associated with free movement, from landholding to pensions to income tax to immigration and the contingent rights of free movement that pertain to the spouses and children of registered skilled nationals.

Our colleague Vela Samuel (right), the widely experienced labour specialist on the CSME/RAI research team, addresses the consultation in the conference room of the Bay Gardens Hotel, Rodney Bay.


We thank the participants for making the national consultation such a strongly positive kickoff to this four-month CSME study. Next stop: Georgetown, Guyana!