GIU (adapated) – The Honourable Premier Reuben Meade has joined the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Heads of Government for the 57th meeting of the OECS Authority, now taking place in Antigua & Barbuda.
The authority, which is made up of Prime Ministers, Premiers and Chief Ministers, is the highest policy-making body in the sub-regional integration movement. At the opening session on Sunday June 2, outgoing OECS Chairman, St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves transferred the chairmanship to Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Dr Baldwin Spencer.
In reports out of Antigua, Prime Minister Spencer said in his address: “With each passing day, there is no longer any doubt that we are living in perhaps one of the most transformative periods in contemporary human history. As we work together to design and build our common future, we would do well to be guided by that realization, because one of the most debilitating features of “islandness,” is the insularity that comes with the false sense of isolation, and of being shielded, almost immunized from global developments.”
He paid tribute to the work already completed by previous leaders of the integration movement for the establishment of the OECS Secretariat, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the Eastern Caribbean Stock Exchange, the regional Government Securities Market, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, the Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority, the Joint Pharmaceutical Procurement Service, and the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority.
Spencer noted that the “social dimension” of the recently adopted Free Movement regime under the Economic Union Treaty, needed to be fleshed out with the “appropriate regulation or Charter that would harmonize and protect the rights attendant to Free Movement.”
Some of these areas he said are: “contingent family rights; improvement of living and working conditions; the right to social protection; the right to freedom and collective bargaining; the right to equal treatment of men and women; the right to health protection and safety at the workplace; the protection of children and adolescents; the protection of the disabled; and the right to fair and proportionate remuneration.
The meetings, which run until Wednesday, are to centre round the financial landscape and the OECS development strategy.
