At the top of the news, we showed you our interview with the CARICOM Secretary General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque where he commented on the rice fight that importer Jack Charles is having with the Belizean Government.
But, we caught him at the tail end of an official visit to Belize, where he was visiting the Prime Minister to discuss what his duties will be for the next 6 months as the Acting Chairman of CARICOM.
This afternoon before he left, he discussed a bit of the activities that the regional organization will be conducting while PM Barrow is at the helm. Here's what he told us:
H.E. Ambassador Irwin LaRocque - Secretary General, CARICOM
"The Prime Minister of Belize, Hon. Dean Barrow is now the Chairman of CARICOM as of 1st January. And as is customary when a chair comes on board as soon as he get the position, I would come to brief the chairman and to begin planning as well or continue planning the hosting of the meeting of the heads of government which will take place here in Belize on the 16th and 17th February. The intersession meeting of heads of government will take place in Placencia and as chairman, the Prime Minister has a very critical role to play, not just in chairing the meeting, but being the head of the community over the next 6 months. So it goes well beyond the meeting It goes to any and every issue that may see of 
in the community that requires the attention of the highest political level including representation of issues or other sorts of political issues. That basically is it and I could not be here in Belize without paying a visit to two of our regional CARICOM institutions. As you see I am in front of CRFM and yesterday afternoon I had the great pleasure of also visiting the Climate Change Center in Belmopan. The Climate Change Center of course having played a very critical role last month in Paris, in terms of facilitating our members' states in the negotiations, for what I considered a very successful outcome of the COP 21 on climate change. So here we are and I just want to emphasized that CARICOM is not just about the CARICOM Secretariat, CARICOM is an architecture of the member states that all work hand in hand together. So for instance, anything that pertains to fisheries in our community and marine resource management in our community - the CRFM is the agency that is going to have the technical responsibility for discharging some of these mandates and similarly on climate change, the Climate Change Center would be that agency specifically setup to deal with issues of climate change to assist the member states to advise etc. So CARICOM is here ever present in Belize every single day working on behalf of the community and working on behalf of Belize."
The Secretary General arrived in Belize on Tuesday, and we're informed that he was scheduled to leave today.
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