Ministers with responsibility for telecommunications in the region of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) met in Saint Lucia last week, to discuss new legislation designed to strengthen consumer rights and ensure that the climate for investment remains competitive.

The main agenda item for the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority  Council of Ministers' 33rd meeting was the new draft Electronic Communications (EC) Bill.

Managing Director of  ECTEL, Embert Charles, commented on the consultations thus far.  

“Normally law-making takes a lot of time. I think the Minister indicated when he came in 2012 that it was already on the table. You have to go through rounds and rounds of consultations. The current consultations, we are about to close what is called the first period of comments because you have to put it out to the public for comments. Everybody who has an interest or who wants to have an interest can comment if they want to do so.”

He went  on to explain that consultations also included members of the wider public and consumers on a whole.

“We have had a lot of engagemenmt with consumers, in fact we have departed a bit from our traditional method of public consultation which was putting something on the website, publishing it in the newspapers. People might see this two column publication of regulations and not even read it. But we have actually facilitated some countries in meetings online and got them to comment. We have gone even one step further. By breaking down the regulations into laymans language and publishing this sort of three page summary so that someone can understand and say oh, I thought this thing was about gigabytes and megabytes this is actually about my phone, and then they can actually comment on it.”

The ECTEL Council of Ministers is made up of ministers responsible for telecommunications in the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The governments of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat have been participating as observers in the deliberations of the ECTEL Council of Ministers since 2012.