Long before the Community's heads of government finally came around, three years ago last week, to mandating a "review of the structure and functioning" of the CARICOM Secretariat, they have been talking about such a necessity in the interest of efficiency and improved service to the now 30-year-old economic integration movement.

The realisation of such an objective is proving a rather elusive CARICOM goal, and the merry-go-round continues on the reshaping and empowerment of the Secretariat.

The intention of such a review was outlined in the Communique bearing the title `Consensus of Chaguaramas’, issued on October 27, 1999, with the underlying theme of "forward together" with a strategy for the development of the region and its peoples.

Three years later, and ten months after a detailed 179-page report was submitted by a five-member committee of regional technocrats, neither the governments nor the Secretariat itself seem in any hurry to introduce a new management system for necessary and improved productivity at a time of far-reaching changes regionally and internationally.

My latest understanding is that the "review" report submitted in January this year, has been subjected to a critical internal examination by an eight-member committee of the Secretariat that considered it sufficiently flawed to now offer pages and pages of new suggestions on the restructuring process.

It may well be asked why it was not considered advisable for the Secretariat to have forwarded the review committee's original report to Heads of Government with perhaps a covering note explaining that a critical assessment was in process to help guide a final decision.

As it is, it is not at all clear to what extent the CARICOM Heads of Government Conference - the highest organ of the Community - will benefit from a comparison of the efforts of the review committee and whatever may eventually emerge from the Secretariat's own '"analysis" or "overhaul" of the report submitted 10 months ago.

The review was entrusted to the supervision of the CARICOM Bureau, that expedient device of the Community's Heads of Government, established as a sort of management committee, after they had previously rejected the idea of a high-powered three-man CARICOM Commission, possibly modelled after the European Commission of the European Union.

The CARICOM Commission was one of the more far-reaching recommendations of The West Indian Commission whose `Time for Action’ 1992 Report remains a most valuable resource material in helping to advance the way forward for CARICOM, now in its 30th year of existence.

The politics that frustrated the creation of the CARICOM Commission resulted from the anxiety of some of the leaders over possible diminishing of their influence or control of the implementation and administration processes of the regional integration movement, though they never verbalised it that way.

The CARICOM Bureau is normally composed of three heads of government involving a current chairman, an outgoing chairman and an incoming one, and also the Community's Secretary General.

It meets occasionally, depending on the issues to be addressed between either an Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM leaders or their regular Annual Summit.

But the CARICOM leaders, unprepared to either extend executive powers to the Secretary General, who heads what still officially functions as an "administrative organ of the Community", opted instead to experiment with a quasi-cabinet mechanism by allocating specific portfolio responsibilities among themselves.

Any idea of revisiting the West Indian Commission's proposal for a three-member Commission with executive authority was just too challenging for them.

While they keep tinkering with the quasi-cabinet mechanism with the hope of achieving desirable results, the issue of the new structure and functioning of an empowered Secretariat remains unresolved.

Originally to have been considered at an Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM leaders in March 2000, the report was submitted in January 2002.

A management audit of the Secretariat is only one of the very critical recommendations advanced to begin the process of overhauling its structure and functions.

It must be evident to most, if not all of the current Heads of Government, that it cannot be business as usual for the Secretariat in its present structure and mode of functioning. Yes, even as institutions and divisions regarded to be under its umbrella are increasingly being distanced away from its operational base.

There is also declining talent at the top and apparent difficulties to attract more skilled and committed individuals. And let not the political/crime climate in Guyana be offered as an excuse. There would be other factors that would also need to be addressed.

The five-member technical committee that undertook the mandated review of the structure and functioning of the Community Secretariat, headquartered in Georgetown, was headed by The Bahamas' current High Commissioner to CARICOM, Leonard Archer, with P.I. Gomes, Executive Director of the Barbados-based Caribbean Centre for Development Administration (CARICAD) as convenor/coordinator.

The three other CARICOM nationals on the committee were Didacus Jules of St. Lucia, Henley Morgan of Jamaica and Maria Smart of Trinidad and Tobago.

A perusal of the report would show that much work was done before it was finally submitted in January this year, including a range of interviews with stakeholders across the Community - business, labour, non-government organisations, the media, cabinet ministers and technocrats in various governments, as well as the Secretary General and senior colleagues of the Secretariat.

Additionally, the committee's research extended to acquainting itself with the insights of the West Indian Commission, previous studies on CARICOM and communiques and working documents resulting from ministerial and heads of government meetings.