BRIDGETOWN--The Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) will be seeking the active assistance of the Caribbean Community Secretariat to help it obtain a "rescue aid" package from the governments of CARICOM, as well as the private sector, for restructuring the regional media institution.

This was the indication last evening from CMC Chairman Mr Lester Spaulding, following a lengthy meeting in Barbados of the shareholders of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU), the two agencies that were merged 17 months ago for the creation of the CMC.

The meeting endorsed the decision of the CMC's Board of Directors for the temporary closure of the corporation as a consequence of a serious cash-flow problem. It also proposed the pursuit of a "rescue strategy", in cooperation with the region's governments, private sector and other interested parties, to have in operation, "as soon as possible" an enterprise that will continue to be in the service of the Caribbean.

Chairman Spaulding, who is scheduled to return to Jamaica this morning, said it was "a most painful decision to close down operations for the restructuring process but it was one we simply had to take in order that we can be back in business as soon as it is feasible".

Conversations have already taken place with CARICOM Secretary General, Edwin Carrington, and the hope is that the closure of the CMC and plans for 'rescue assistance' could be discussed at the forthcoming meeting of the CARICOM Bureau this week in Turks and Caicos Island.

Spaulding said that a lot of details had to be worked out in considering "various options and priorities" in the interest of the affected workers (some 50 of them have been laid off), having a more "viable and profit-oriented" CMC and one that could render the "valuable services that the region has come to expect and appreciate".

A delegation of employees of the CMC, involved in its wire, radio and television services, was scheduled to meet Chairman Spaulding and shareholders' representatives last evening to discuss their entitled monetary benefits and to get some clear understanding of their future with a resuscitated enterprise.

The workers, among them senior journalists and broadcasters, have been expressing their anger over the sudden closure of the CMC's operations and the "humiliating circumstances" of termination of their services. Some have already sought legal opinion.

But Spaulding insisted that "it was a most regrettable and unavoidable development, and I can only hope to have things corrected as soon as possible".

Meanwhile the Editor-in-Chief of the 'Jamaica Observer', Mr Paget deFreitas, the first editor of 'CANABusiness" and a former long serving regional journalist of CANA, said yesterday that the shareholders should "give serious consideration in ensuring first of all how to have the region's wire service back in operation".

He said he supports the move to involve the region's governments in a rescue aid package since the services of the CMC were "vital to the regional integration process and unity of the Caribbean people".