CARICOM Secretary-General Sir Edwin Carrington last Wednesday urged the Budget Committee of the Community to discharge its duty in a way that would allow the CARICOM Secretariat to assist member states to meet the challenge of “catapulting the integration process”. He was at the time speaking at the Fourteenth Meeting of the Committee at the CARICOM Secretariat Headquarters, Turkeyen, a release stated.
As the members of the committee began consideration of the secretariat’s budget for 2011, the Secretary-General reminded the committee that the secretariat’swork programme was defined by the Councils of the Community led by the CARICOM Heads of Government.
The Secretary-General recalled the challenges of the past year, noting that the Community was still struggling to come to terms with the extent of the devastation caused by the catastrophic earthquake that had hit Haiti in January.
He bemoaned the failure of the international community to meet its pledges of assistance to Haiti; a situation which he said had made the rebuilding process from the earthquake “troublingly slow.” Once again, he said, the call has gone out for assistance to Haiti in light of the scourge of cholera which so far has claimed more than 2,000 lives and shows no sign of abating.
In an effort to provide much needed assistance to Haiti in the throes of the cholera epidemic, he said that the secretariat was coordinating, on behalf of member states, a medical mission to help in the battle.
