He noted that Guyana is in a position to make the amendments to the ‘CARICOM Skills National Act’, which is already in place, to allow skilled nationals within CARICOM to move freely among member states.

The policy on ‘Free Movement of Persons’ comprises of two components - facilitation of travel, and free movement of the approved categories of skilled community nationals.

Rohee told a news conference at the Foreign Ministry yesterday that “approved categories” refer to university graduates, media workers, artistes, musicians and sports persons.

With respect to the free movement of the approved categories, Rohee said the Attorney General’s Chambers has prepared a draft amendment to the CARICOM Skilled Nationals Act seeking to incorporate the other approved categories, that is, media workers, artistes, musicians and sports persons.

Regarding the facilitation of travel, the current position is that whilst Guyana does not have the equipment available to neither offer its nationals machine-readable ‘Photo-ID’ nor to read those presented by CARICOM nationals, Guyana has agreed in principle to accept Photo-IDs (machine readable) from CARICOM nationals at its ports of entry.

He said currently the Attorney General’s Chambers is preparing a Cabinet Memorandum on this issue as well as the adoption of a common CARICOM E/D Form.

Guyana has been in compliance with the requirement for CARICOM/non-CARICOM lines at the immigration points. This is also in keeping with the deadline of June 30, 2003.