Race against time for CARICOM special visas
By Wendella Davidson
Guyana Chronicle
December 9, 2006
TIME is against the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to have final arrangements in place before the opening for applications, next Friday, for the much-touted CARICOM special visas, Secretary-General Edwin Carrington said yesterday.
With the approaching deadline, he made an impassioned plea for the signatures of at least three member states by this weekend on the final text of the agreement.
“It is critical that this very weekend at least three member states sign the final text of the CARICOM Special Visa Agreement, bearing in mind that December 15, next Friday, is the opening for applications for the visas,” he said.
Carrington was speaking at an end-of-year news conference in which he also unveiled the community’s plans for the new year.
The briefing at the CARICOM Secretariat at Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, featured reporters from other member states participating via video-conferencing.
With Carrington were several members of the executive management of the secretariat, including Deputy Secretary-General Lolita Applewhaite and Assistant Secretary-General, Regional Trade and Integration, Irwin La Roque.
Caribbean governments have agreed to a CARICOM visa policy for Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007 but are exempting citizens of countries that have ploughed significant investments into the region and those countries where the majority of tourists come from, Barbados Deputy Prime Minister Mia Motley announced at a news conference here last month.
Motley, who heads a regional task force looking into security and law enforcement for CWC 2007, said “this level of security is absolutely imperative if we are to show our citizens that in the creation of the single domestic space, we are not compromising their security in any respect.”
Citizens of Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Spain, Netherlands, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and all its dependent territories, will not be required to obtain the visas, which will cost US$100. Citizens of the Caribbean, associate member countries, or persons who are in the region and enjoying status as residents, or are on visitors visas, work permits, and student visas would also not be required to obtain the visa.
However, citizens of Haiti, which was shunned by the regional grouping following the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, but which is now regaining its status, would be required to obtain a visa, Motley noted.
Following the decision of CARICOM to designate all the host venues of CWC 2007, including Dominica, which wanted inclusion in the arrangements for the event, as a single domestic space, visitors to the region would be able to travel through the nine host venues without having their passports stamped.
NO PASSPORT FATIGUE
Motley explained that once they would have entered one of the host venues, they would be able to travel on to others without the passport fatigue. For citizens in the Caribbean, their passports would also not be stamped, but she warned that Caribbean citizens should not refrain from travelling without their passport.
Carrington yesterday said 2007 seems set to rank as a “very auspicious” year with the major event being the staging of the ICC (International Cricket Council) Cricket World Cup tournament, for which the preparatory process is already in high gear.
“As far as the Cricket World Cup is concerned, all of us must play our best strokes as we welcome the world to our shores and ensure that a good time is had by all beyond the boundary! The event has already had a positive effect on the integration movement in a number of ways, in particular in the field of security,” he added.
And, noting that the CWC 2007 legacy should be one that would leave the integration arrangements stronger, a confident Secretary-General proclaimed his West Indies patriotism by exclaiming “of course we will also win the trophy! I hope” -- much to the amusement of all present.
He spoke too, of the region participating in the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, joining Haiti in celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Haitian parliament and staging the first-ever Conference of the Caribbean in Washington D.C, capping them all as “Historic times indeed”.
In an overview of the secretariat’s activities for 2006, the Secretary-General said this year was very significant for the community, with the region moving closer to being the integrated body which all hopes it would become.
He recalled that 2006 began on a positive note with the launch of the Single Market on January 1 by six member states -- Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
An impressive formal ceremony was held at Mona, Jamaica on January 30 to officially sign them on.
And at the 27th regular session of the conference of heads on July 3, the remaining six – Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and St Vincent -- followed suit.
Carrington referred to a statement by Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning in January in his capacity as community chairman, in which he said the net expected result is that “our economies will become more resilient, with greater capacity for self-generation and more attractive for inflows of new capital.”
There was an agreement in February by the heads to capitalise the CARICOM Development Fund at US$250M.
The CSME was boosted with the bringing together of representatives of member states, captains of industry, lead representatives of labour, members of academia and civil society in a three-day symposium in pursuit of the Single Economy in Barbados.
On the Single Market and Economy, Carrington reminded that the region can only achieve this through the joint efforts of governments and their social partners, noting “it is not easy to achieve the status of CSME, hence the reason that CARICOM so far is the only grouping of developing countries to have committed to this depth of integration.”
Pointing out that there is still a significant way to go, he added that commitment is one thing, and implementation, the true test, is another.
Some significant developments he highlighted were the summits, an intersessional in Trinidad and Tobago in February under the chairmanship of Manning and a regular annual summit in St Kitts and Nevis under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Denzil Douglas.
Those meetings, he said, were supplemented by two gatherings of the bureau, in St Kitts and Nevis in October and Barbados this month. There were also other major international meetings, the CARICOM-Spain Summit in Madrid and the European Union/Latin America and Caribbean Summit in Vienna, Austria, both held in May.
The secretariat also received visits from Manning and Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica.