The Executive Management Committee of the CARICOM Secretariat will be in Retreat at the Mt Irvine Bay Hotel, Tobago on April 8 and 9, 1998.

The Committee comprises the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General, the three Assistant Secretaries-General and the General Counsel.

Theme of the Retreat is "Managing the Secretariat in the 21^st Century"and the chief Resource person is Dr Mohan Kaul, Director, Management and Training Services Division, Commonwealth Secretariat. Assisting in the conduct of the sessions will be Dr Neave Beckles, Project Manager of the CARICOM Regional Institutional Strengthening Project (CRISP), who is also co-ordinator of the retreat .

CRISP, which is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is supporting the Retreat financially.

CARICOM Secretary-General Mr Edwin Carrington, who is also Project Director of CRISP, said the Secretariat as the engine room of the Regional movement had to be prepared to meet the challenges which the coming millenium posed for the Caribbean and the integration process.

"We are grateful to the Commonwealth Secretariat and CIDA that someone of the calibre of Dr Kaul could assist us in our preparations for the 21^st century,"Mr Carrington said.

Dr Kaul, a Ph.D graduate from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, has been a corporate director and a policy adviser to Governments and consultant to a number of international agencies, academic institutions and public and private sector organisations. Currently a member of the United Nations Secretary-General's Task Force on Human Resource Management, Dr Kaul has been responsible for the implementation of the Commonwealth Initiative on Public Service Reforms: "Towards a New Public Administration" which was endorsed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government at Auckland, New Zealand in 1995.