The Galleons Passage and the Regional Food Security Plan assignment

One of the Caribbean Community’s foremost current collective preoccupation, its ongoing response to what has been determined to be a food security crisis, has returned to the fore in the light of information that has surfaced in the media regarding the launch of an intra-regional ferry service which, in the words of Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, “is driven by the need to move raw materials and fresh produce from the producing areas to the consumption and manufacturing areas within this sub-zone of CARICOM (T&T, Guyana, Barbados).”

This, unquestionably, is uplifting news, tied as it is to the region’s all-important commitment to enhancing its food security bona fides, as a whole. Logistically, the exercise will involve the movement of food from its major producers in the region to countries closest to the edge of food security, a pursuit that will involve considerable movement of cargo by sea.

What the announcement about the ferry service does is to underscore the multi-faceted nature of the wider envisaged food security plan. Simultaneously, it serves as a timely reminder that the pace of progress towards full and final completion of the process of putting the regional food security plan in place be consistent with what we are told is the scale of the food security challenge confronting some of the countries in the region. Here, if one is to be frank, it often appears as though the leaders of the region are attaching less than the required sense of urgency to the completion and subsequent execution of the Plan, that weakness being reflected in what appears to be a decided indifference to providing the various populations of the participating countries with timely and thorough updates on the pace of progress towards completion, notwithstanding the fact that there has been no shortage of opportunities to do so. Here it should be stated that there is no evidence that the authorities here batted an eyelid after this newspaper had stated that a ‘sit down’ exchange between the Ministers of Agriculture of Guyana and Barbados (presumably the ‘lead’ CARICOM Ministers on the regional food security plan) late last year, was one palpably missed opportunity to update the region as a whole regarding the pace of progress towards a settled and up and running food security plan.

That there has been a breakdown in communication between the people of the region and those responsible for the planning and execution of the

Plan is not a position than is easily challengeable. The recent announcement that two of the three ‘lead countries’ (Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago) involved in the execution of an agreement that will see the Trinidad and Tobago-owned sea-going vessel, The Galleons Passage, pressed into service to help move food to the territories in the region, is unquestionably, a significant piece of news since it creates a sense of forward movement in the context of the wider food security plan. Here it has to be said that any movement or motion where the current envisaged regional food security plan is concerned is important in the circumstances where the scale of the challenge may well equal some of the other pressing collective challenges (climate change being perhaps the best example) facing the Caribbean at this time.

In the course of Dr. Rowley’s recent public pronouncement that alluded to the envisaged role of The Galleons Passage, he alluded to “the closing of discussions and a readiness to establish a regional cargo ferry service between Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados” which this editorial interprets to mean that nothing of any significance now stands in the way of sealing a deal specifically on the pressing into service of The Galleons Passage in support of the Regional Food Security undertaking. Presum-ably, what lies ahead has to do with a timeline for actual execution which is precisely where, in this and other instances, the region is often weighed and found wanting.

While Dr. Rowley is clear on the mission of the Galleons Passage, which he says is driven “by the need to move raw materials and fresh produce from the producing areas to the consumption and manufacturing areas within this sub-zone of CARICOM (TT, Guyana, Barbados)”, he is, perhaps understandably, seemingly unable to immediately provide timelines for the completion of the assignment associated with readying the vessel for its undertaking.

That timeline, one expects, will be made public a good deal quicker than the time it is taking to secure an informed/helpful update on just where we are in relation to the state of readiness of the substantive Regional Food Security Terminal. Two developments deriving out of what Dr. Rowley had to say recently are worthy of mention here. The first, the Trinidad and Tobago Cabinet has already ‘signed off’ on the Galleons Passage aspect of the project. In the same presentation, Dr. Rowley added that once the ‘signing off’ aspect of the assignment had been completed, Trinidad and Tobago’s Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan would have been advised “to make the Galleons Passage ready to participate” in the region’s execution of the promised Regional Security Plan.

Given Dr. Rowley’s unambiguous pronouncement on the state of readiness of The Galleons Passage to undertake its designated assignment we can, one expects, safely assume that the vessel is now being made fully ‘ready to roll.’ What, certainly would help to cause the region to become less prone to missing critical deadlines is for the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to make an immediate region-wide announcement to the effect that the Galleons Passage stands in full readiness to execute its aspect of what, for the Caribbean, is a critical mission. That, hopefully should provide an ‘incentive’ for those responsible for the readying of the Terminal to lead us out of the condition of darkness in which we are in the matter of the pace of progress towards its completion.