OECS Director General reflects on tenure

Following ten years of service to the region, Director General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Dr.Len Ishmael, is leaving the post with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

The Director General who is the Chief Executive of the Organization has been responsible for the overall administration and management of the organization. She is currently in Dominica on a farewell visit.

In an exclusive interview with the Government Information Service (GIS) on Thursday Dr. Ishmael saluted the achievements of the OECS under her watch.

“I think it is fair to say that it has been perhaps the most exhilarating journey of my life, full of passion and enthusiasm, it hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve certainly gone where we have never gone before and in the process of doing that I think we are extremely proud of where we find ourselves right now.”

“I think two things stand out, one that we have been able to really pursue a path that allows us to champion and advocate the cause of the O.E.C.S ourselves and undertake the intellectual that is required to be able to put our own strategic interest on the global table, and secondly to deepen the union among our member states by forming the Economic Union, I think both of those things have been very credible not only in the region but internationally and have resulted in great benefit for us as a region. We are a small region in a larger region and I think there is a tremendous amount that can be learnt from the story of the O.E.C.S to date and I am really measurably proud to be associated with our gains over the last ten years.”

The Director General described her tenure as one which was focused on fulfilling several mandates given by the OECS Authority.

She noted that the work of the Organization has been redirected towards the achievement of deeper integration among its member states in a more strategic way.

“If you take a look around the world and take a look even at our region, it is very clear that sovereign states took a step back from the principle and idea of integration and became much more protectionist and much more nationalistic in their own thinking, in their own ideology to the detriment of integration as a fundamental principle of moving forward together as small states. We saw that certainly in CARICOM. The financial recession did something completely different for the O.E.C.S. Our view has always been that in times of turbulence we need each other more, not less, so it accelerated our plans to deepen the union, through the design of a brand new treaty at the very centre of which was the establishment of an Economic Union.”

Dr. Ishmael said over the course of this past year her organization have made huge strides in implementing critical frameworks pertaining to implementation of the OECS Economic Union.

“The O.E.C.S model is one which is exceptional in that we have pulled the human and financial resources to provide a rather impressive array of institutional architecture of our region, so we are the only group of small countries ever to have had a single supreme court, a single currency, a single central bank, a single telecommunications authority, a single authority for civil aviation, we have joint diplomatic missions and it’s also important to understand that even with the EU has formed an Economic Union for such a long time in advance of us having formed an Economic union, the truth our institutional architecture was much more advanced.”

The outgoing O.E.C.S Director General is proud that she was able to put the operations of the O.E.C.S on a solid footing which she says has resulted in greater effectiveness in serving the interests of member states.”

Dr. Ishmael noted that during her stewardship she was able to put systems in place to ensure greater confidence among development partners.

She told the GIS that this has resulted in the mobilization of new resources in support of the region’s development objectives.

“That has been fundamental to our success in attracting much more by way of development support and development resources of all kinds. It’s very difficult to attract additional resources to engage in regional agendas through the execution of projects without having in place domestically in your organization the sort of systems and processes and mechanisms institutionally to undertake the due diligence. One of the first things that I did when I came into the organization, was to create the office of the internal auditor, who is very much a Dominican, who has maintained an office in Dominica and he has been instrumental in putting the processes in place for due diligence and governance.”

She continued “we have also institutionalized an office for project management so that all projects are in fact managed, supervised, reported on at a particular standard for the organization as a whole, so that the organization and senior officials know everything they need to know about all the projects that we execute and when we report back to development partners, we report at a standard across the board that showcases our own drive to excellence.”

“We also set up procurement specialists for example, with procurement manuals which are now world class and invariably when we attract millions of dollars worth of funds we use our own procurement methodology and systems to procure goods and services against the development funds that we received.  So let’s say ten years ago we might have received 3,4 million dollars annually in development support, by two years ago in the first quarter of the year we were attracting 120m so that every year we have doubled what we have been able to attract and that’s because of development partner confidence in our organization, in the fact that we have projected ourselves globally on a world stage, we have advocated and championed our cause ,we have undertaken the intellectual work that is required to speak about the O.E.C.S. and prepare ourselves for things that might be threats on the horizon. We may be poor but we insist on being treated with dignity and respect and we have really and truly put our organization on a very good footing.”

Dr. Ishmael says the OECS is now being viewed as an organization of sound repute and stature both regionally and internationally.

“Though we are small there are lessons of experience that we export to the rest of the world, and indeed the O.E.C.S is being held up very much by international institutions such as the World Bank as a model for other small island developing states around the world. We are the trailblazers not just in the Caribbean but around the world.”

The current O.E.C.S Director General will demit office at the end of the year to take up a new position in Brussels. The new Director General is expected to be selected by the end of this year.

The position of Director General is open to nationals of the OECS member states and is tenable as of January 1, 2014.