Mottley calls for greater integration

MIA MOTTLEY, Prime Minister of Barbados, has called for greater integration among the people in the West Indies region.

Mottley was the feature speaker on Friday evening at the Queen’s Park Cricket Club annual dinner and awards presentation, at the Century Ballroom, Queen’s Park Oval, St Clair.

According to Mottley, “Coming back to the problems that we’ve witnessed globally with migration, as our abilities to reach out to be our brothers and sisters’ keeper, is our recognition that our greatest thing that bedevils the Caribbean at this time is our return to xenophobia.”

Mottley touched on failed attempts at regional unity, over the past few decades.

“I have seen regional partnerships stall, not because we don’t know what to do but because we have not felt passionate enough about why we must do it,” she said.

The Barbados PM pointed out, “What we must do is claim ground where we can. I feel strongly that we must first claim the ground that has been secured thus far, across generations.

“But within the particular region at this point in time, and I speak about people and I speak about migration, let us claim ground in what we have done in securing our borders, and let us move to the next level that could allow that freedom of movement in that capacity, in particular our young children.

“If they grow and become adults with a sense of their own peculiar community or inter-state reality rather than the wider region, then we will continue to perpetuate the bureaucratic (struggles) that pretends to be a sign of regional integration.”

Mottley made it clear that “it is only if we work together and we work as one that we would become stronger.”