CARICOM preparing agenda for upcoming conference

Jun 07, 2008 News

The 22nd meeting of the CARICOM Council of Ministers yesterday commenced its meeting to prepare an agenda for the upcoming conference.

According to CARICOM Secretary General, Edwin Carrington, Ministers will be reviewing a provisional agenda submitted by the Secretariat, for the twenty-ninth Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government and prepare a Draft Agenda.

“It is this Council, therefore, which in large measure determines the issues which the Supreme Organ will consider when it meets.”

According to Carrington at yesterday’s Community Council Meeting, a key function of the council related to proposals emanating from other community organs.

“You have the responsibility to review and approve the programmes of the Community on the basis of those proposals…This includes the mobilisation and allocation of resources and such measures as may be required to enhance and promote the implementation process as well as the monitoring and evaluation.”

The Council will be called on to review the legal instruments required to give effect to several decisions of the Conference of Heads of Government taken at their recent Special session on crime and security, as it relates to aviation safety, security oversight, disaster and emergency management, maritime and airspace security co-operation, among others.

The Council is also expected to receive updates on the preparations for CARIFESTA X.
The meeting will be chaired by Deputy Prime Minister of The Bahamas, Brent Symonnette.
The chairman, in his opening address, told the Ministers present that yesterday’s meeting sought to synthesise the critical inputs that will form the basis of the agenda of the Conference of Heads of Government to enable that organ to fulfill its mandate, which is primarily “to determine and provide policy direction to the Community”, when it meets in Antigua and Barbuda in three weeks’ time.