Barbados PM defends lifting of visa requirement for Haitians
`Why does each country seek to have separate civil aviation authorities when there can be a strong regional aviation authority that is vested with national and regional jurisdictions’
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley believes that a review of CARICOM’s purpose and objectives are “absolutely needed” if the region is “to avoid the nervousness of what the free movement of people means in a Caribbean” of large and small countries, and at a time when Bridgetown has removed visa restrictions for the people of Haiti.
In her maiden speech at the opening ceremony of the 39th Regular Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government held at Montego Bay Convention Centre, Jamaica, Mottley said to a loud round of applause, “My Cabinet has agreed to remove the visa requirements for Haiti because in our view it breaches the fundamental tenets that bind us under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.”
Voted in at an election that saw her party winning every seat, Mottley added, “In those circumstances, those tenets for those who have forgotten, relate to non-discrimination and relate to not treating anyone outside of the community in a more favourable manner than we treat each other in the community.”
As lead Prime Minister with responsibility for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), she said, she would not know how to be responsible for the CSME, and to require of Haitians standards that are greater than those that are required from people who do not belong to the community or who are not signatories to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
“Every day we allow people who are not members of this community to travel freely into the Caribbean without visas.”
Noting that Haiti has signed onto the revised treaty and has committed to the CSME, she said, “Barbados choses to lead by example and not by default in this regard.”
Haitians require visas to visit other CARICOM countries. The numbers who have entered Guyana this year and last year and now cannot be accounted for was recently raised in Parliament.
In relation to anxieties that have been expressed with respect to the difficulties that the region may face by those persons who may want to go to areas that may not normally and traditionally be able to Turn to centre pages