Pandemic: Pluses and minuses, says CARICOM Secretary-General

THE COVID-19 pandemic’s impact has been wide spread across the region. Though this has been the case, within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) it has resulted in some positives.
Such a view was shared by CARICOM Secretary-General, Dr Carla Barnett who stated although the region “had a huge hit”, it has been an “opportunity in many ways to reconsider where we are and how best to change what we do, and how we do it as we move forward.”
Her comments came while addressing yesterday’s Regional Year-End Press conference online.
Touching on some of the positives, she said the COVID- 19 pandemic has forced CARICOM to “collaborate much more closely on a number of things.”
“The pandemic has forced us to work together on that very important issue of access to vaccines and it has also raised the level of priority that we now have to give to a number of things which we have been talking about for some time and now we are all trying to get these things done individually and at the CARICOM level.”
She continued, “We are talking about things like
incorporating IT more into the waywework.Sowehavealotof E-governance programmes accelerating at the level of member states and within the Secretariat as well we are having to work through how we work differently because of having to integrate ICTs more into the way we communicate, work, get our business done.”
In agriculture, Dr. Barnett said greater emphasis has been placed on this area.
“One of the things that happened early in the pandemic was that the shipping lanes were disrupted and I say this often, for a region with a $5 billion food import bill when we have the capacity to produce food and therefore provide some degree of food security, we needed to prioritise that. So, this has put much greater impact on agriculture and agricultural development particularly, the production of food to ensure food security.”
The CARICOM Secretary- General also said greater priority has been given to “institutions like CARPHA and CDEMA that we know have been important in the past but now we know that they have to be properly organised, supported and enabled to work and so that has been happening with those agencies as well.”