Jamaicans have spent much time venting their anger about the deficiencies of the Caribbean Community (Caricom); in sum, saying the movement has not benefited Jamaica.

Our business community has felt that Jamaica’s fairness in opening its arms to businesses from other Caricom territories has not been reciprocated, and many ordinary Jamaicans complain bitterly about the treatment meted out to them when they try to visit other regional countries.

We in this space have ourselves been staunch believers in regional integration, but we would be unhelpful to the process were we not to acknowledge the challenges faced by Jamaicans visiting and working in other Caricom territories.

The feeling that there is an inherent bias against Jamaicans is difficult to shake because the complaints range from businessmen to Jamaicans in the lower socio-economic categories. It is, therefore, not difficult to understand the calls for Jamaica to pull out of Caricom.

For all these reasons, we and many other Jamaicans welcomed the setting up of the Caricom Review Commission, headed by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding, as a step in the right direction. We are being afforded an opportunity to take an objective look at the good and the bad of our membership in the regional grouping.

This week, the review commission issued a call to Jamaicans to submit suggestions that would facilitate a more comprehensive and inclusive review process by the 18-member committee. Written submissions are to be sent to caricomreviewpub@mfaft.gov.jm on or before August 31, 2016.

We are fully supportive of the work of the commission and we urge all Jamaicans to participate by sending in their experiences, suggestions and observations on the workings of Caricom. It is one thing to vent, but quite another to do something about resolving the problem.

At the end of the process we should be in a much better position to decide whether to remain or leave Caricom — our own Jamexit.

To assist readers who wish to make submissions, we republish the main points of the commission’s terms of reference, which the public may use as a guideline. To:

* evaluate the effects that Jamaica’s participation in Caricom has had on the country’s economic growth and development;

* analyse Caricom’s performance against the goals and objectives of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas;

* review the Caricom arrangement in light of the wider Caribbean, inclusive of the Dominican Republic and Cuba, as well as other Caribbean territories;

* assess the value of Jamaica’s membership in Caricom to its influence in critical international fora and with third-state trade and development partners;

* assess the benefits from the coordination of foreign policy positions within Caricom;

* assess the benefits that Jamaica has derived through functional cooperation within Caricom institutions and its framework;

* consider the question of the enlargement of the membership of Caricom;

* assess whether the Caricom dispute settlement provisions provide realistic options for settlement of disputes for Jamaica;

* examine arrangements for the enforcement of decisions within the regional integration framework.

We also support Mr Golding’s call on participants to be objective and to assess whether our own policies and actions have caused us to be “victims of the integration process”.