I totally agree that we need to aspire to regional integration as the foundation of moving forward. Our resource endowment should be considered as the entire pool to be drawn from all of the islands. Eric Williams so called creative mathematics continue to haunt us and supress us to this day. The continued assertion of each island’s own sovereignty continues to divide us and suppress any growth or hope for a brighter future. As you say, the organisations of the OECS and CARICOM need strong leadership and unity to create and implement ideas, strategies and measures to guide us through these rough waters and to secure a better tomorrow for the region.

One important starting measure is also to educate our people. Education is still a privilege and not a right notwithstanding our institutions for tertiary education which have been internationally accredited. Something is terribly amiss with this picture. Are we trying to maintain some sort of status quo? Shame on us. As long as our masses remain largely uneducated then we will continue to make bad decisions as a people. We should all take a page from Barbados’ book in this regard…free education up to tertiary level. All governments need to invest in its human capital first.

Our other natural resources need to be capitalised on as well and sustainability must be at the heart of every measure. If we were to sit and assess our resources it would be mind boggling as to what we had to offer as a region.

In tourism for example, can you imagine a cruise line owned by West Indian partners? Why can’t we be paid to show off our region to our visitors/guests?

We need to start now. Some believe that if our politicians do not want it, if they do not have the political will we will not get anywhere. We need to start thinking however and believing that if we the voters want it then the politicians will get on board.

The issue of training stands, though, and this is one area were CKLN will need to put much effort, plus to ensure continued local buy-in, else we would have just spent lots of money with no achievable benefits.

Why, then, is there need for dedicated “CKLN Bandwidth”? If secure connectivity is needed, there is VPN technology to provide this. If the pipe is not big enough, then seek to increase it at the various sites. But a CKLN Caribbean communications network, to me is spending money in areas where it is really not necessary, or needed, hence a waste of money that can be spent on other areas, such as training.