Implementation of Contingent Rights Protocol could lessen migration woes – Caricom official

Aug 24, 2013 News

A significant part of maintaining the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) entails embracing moves to address the issue of Contingent Rights.
This notion was recently highlighted by Dr Rudolph Cummings who holds the position of Programme Manager, Health Sector Development, within the Caricom Secretariat.

Dr Rudolph Cummings, Caricom’s Programme Manager, Health Sector Development.

And according to Dr Cummings, who was at the time speaking at a press conference at the International Conference Centre, the Caricom Secretariat has a great stake in ensuring that the formulation of the Contingent Rights protocol among Member States of Caricom is adequate to cater to persons migrating with their employment.
The Programme Manager, in highlighting some concerns, pointed out that the problems associated with migration are in fact broader than is often outlined.
Moreover, he noted that the Contingent Rights protocol is one that was designed to ensure that the families of the identified migrants are able to enjoy co-equal benefits with the native population.
Dr Cummings amplified his concerns even as Guyana and Suriname are engaged in a collaborative move aimed at strengthening the exchange of health care. The strategic action in fact represents part of the local Health Ministry’s efforts to forge closer ties to ensure that frontier health care between the two territories is nurtured in the face of consistent migration.
Like Guyana, Suriname has embraced the importance of primary health care, which according to Suriname Minister of Health, Dr Michel Blokland, “is the best way to improve equitable health and contain the high costs of specialist care.”
Even as moves are made to strengthen Suriname’s primary health care system, Dr Blokland, at the start of a Bi-National meeting here in Guyana, disclosed that there is yet a need to refer patients to secondary care.  As such, he said that construction of a district hospital in Albina, at the French Guiana border has started, and plans are apace for another such facility in the district of Wanica with the assistance of the Chinese.
“Our concern with reaching individuals with health care extends to those migrants living and working in our country, many of whom make considerable contributions to our economy,” said Dr Blokland. He alluded to the complex setting of the gold-mining areas and the lack of documentation of some of the migrants as some of the factors that make the delivery of healthcare a difficult task.
But according to Dr Cummings, even though there is a significant issue in relation to health and migration, there are much broader issues to be addressed, particularly as it relates to the Caricom-proposed Contingent Rights.
“Migration is a major issue…it is a cross-cutting issue for a number of different things that we attempt to do,” Dr Cummings asserted.
Preparatory work for the introduction of the Protocol on Contingent Rights commenced in 2008 with a view of catering to spouses, children and other dependents of persons who exercised the right to move within the framework of the Caricom Single Market and Economy.  Although hindered by some degree of slothfulness in its implementation, the protocol is one that is intended to ensure the rights to services such as education and health.
A national consultation geared at charting the way forward for the protocol was in fact held in St Lucia in 2011 with a specific focus on the rights which the principal beneficiary, spouse and dependents, are entitled to once they have exercised one of the primary rights under the CSME.  The Mission to St. Lucia was once facilitated with the assistance of the 9th European Development Fund, Caribbean Integration Support Programme.