This column has already commented on the virtues of the initiative spearheaded by former Jamaican prime minister and Caricom elder statesman Percival J Patterson to put together a US$1billion fund to help regional service providers participate in the physical recon-struction of earthquake-ravaged Haiti. It has applauded the efforts of the Guyana Manu-facturers and Services Association (GMSA) and its President Clinton Williams to bring the project to public attention.
At the same time we had noted his stated concern over what he appeared to feel was a certain indifference to the initiative on the part of local business entities though we chose not to make ‘a big deal’ of it at the time. We thought then that we would await the outcome of the teleconferencing exercise among businesses across the region that had been scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of this week and which was scheduled to be facilitated by the Caricom Secretariat.
We understood the purpose of the telecon-ferencing exercise to be to facilitate initial dis-cussions between and among the potential bidders for contracts in Haiti, including their Haitian counterparts ahead of a face-to-face forum scheduled to be held in Port of Spain, Trinidad on March 21 and 22 to fine tune the arrangements for participating in the reconstruction exercise in Haiti.
On the first day of the two-day telecon-ferencing exercise, we learnt that the exercise had been postponed because of lack of partici-pation from stakeholders in several Caricom countries. No official statement was issued on this. We simply heard it from a source close to the organisers. Immediately, our minds went back to the frustration expressed by Williams over the seeming indifference of Guyanese contractors and we wondered whether the postponement of the teleconferencing exercise was not, in fact a manifestation of a wider regional indifference.
If that were indeed the case, it would, of course, be unthinkable that companies in the region with the skill and the competence to make a contribution to the rebuilding of Haiti and supported into the bargain by a fund that would facilitate their participation would be indifferent to such an opportunity.
Despite our best efforts we have not so far been able to find a single local company ready to express a serious interest in taking on the Haiti challenge; a matter which we have raised with an official of the GMSA. Not that the GMSA could be blamed for such indifference as might exist locally since, from all that we have been told, private sector entities possessing the skills and competen-cies that are needed in Haiti have been sensitised to the opportunity by the GMSA.
What makes the opportunity even more appealing is the fact that first, it provides an opportunity for regional entities to work together – along with Haitian firms – in Haiti and, second, it affords regional craftsmen of one kind or another the opportunity to demonstrate that their skills in the various disciplines are second to none anywhere in the world. This is not to be sniffed at, since one imagines that the Caribbean firms that eventually work in Haiti will be working alongside bigger, better equipped firms from other parts of the world. In that context there may even be important learning opportunities to be derived from the experience.
Our hope is that in the days that are left before the Port of Spain forum the GMSA will be able to do enough to ensure that Guyana is fully and effectively represented at that forum.
