Some CARICOM employees may soon find themselves out of jobs as the Community looks to adopt belt tightening measures with the proposal of a reduced budget.
The Guyana government’s chief spokesman Dr. Roger Luncheon yesterday told reporters that he believed that retrenchment will be unavoidable, since budget cuts usually meant programmes will be discontinued. “With the loss of a programme, the staff responsible for discharging or meeting the deliverables for those programmes will be out of work. So I don’t have any doubt in my mind that this revised downward budget would likely see some impact on the size of the staff and the number of employees, professionals and otherwise, who will be working for or with CARICOM,” he stated.
Dr. Luncheon added that the effects of the global financial crisis in particular were to blame for member states being unable to fully meet their financial obligations to CARICOM. However, he stated that Guyana is not one of the states whose annual contributions were not met in 2010, while adding that 2011’s commitment had already been factored into this year’s national budget.
Media reports earlier this month on the likelihood of job cuts at CARICOM were discredited by the Secretariat, which said the reports of layoffs had “no basis in fact.”
In a statement, CARICOM had said that due to the effects of the global economic and financial crises on Caricom Member States and Associate Members, the Secretariat has been operating in an environment of severe financial constraints. “In recognition of the realities of the situation, the Secretariat has frozen its budget over the last three years and implemented cost containment measures while continuing to provide the level of service expected by Member States,” the statement said. “Some of the measures are quite similar to those implemented by some Member States themselves,” it added.
The Secretariat’s Work Programme and Budget were not approved before because there was a request that it undertake further cost-cutting measures and resubmit a reduced budget. The budget is to be presented at the CARICOM Heads Inter-Sessional meeting being held in Grenada today and tomorrow. President Bharrat Jagdeo is leading the Guyana delegation to the meeting.
The agenda will see a focus on Community governance and the direction of the Community, and Community integration, in particular.
Also up for discussion are food security, ICT, energy and the Caricom/UNASUR synergies, which Jagdeo will address as Pro Tempore President of UNASUR.
