PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders have expressed disappointment at the flow of information within the 15-member grouping and have agreed to a working group to examine the situation, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has said.
“You can probably tell me what went on in New York today or what went on in Iowa or what went on in Texas, but you can’t tell me what went on in Belmopan, you can’t tell me what went on in Kingston or you can’t tell me what went on in Kingstown.
“We have therefore to ensure that Caribbean people have access to real time information. We need to move it to that stage, we have to ensure that the decisions we take at the levels of governments, at the level of regional institutions are shared,” Mottley told the news conference that followed the two-day special Caricom summit that looked at ways of deepening the regional integration process through the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) that allows for the free movement of goods, services, skills and labour.
She told reporters that access to information “is what drives people’s decision and our citizens need that information in order to decide what they plan to do at the individual level or what they plan to do at the level of business”.
Mottley did not indicate whether the performance of the Barbados-based Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), which produces a nightly programme on regional events as well as its daily wire service, had come under scrutiny during the two-day meeting, but informed sources told CMC that the need to mobilise funds to support the regional media network had been discussed.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who chaired the summit, said that the “importance of sharing information about what is happening regionally was also accepted and we have set up a working group to advise on how best we can have a sustainable information flow to the people of the Community about each other and about the integration movement”.
He did not disclose the composition of the working group.
