Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says more must be done to en­sure that flood­ing in T&T is sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced. She said that at a news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a stake­hold­ers' meet­ing. The meet­ing was held to up­date the Prime Min­is­ter on the state of readi­ness for the hur­ri­cane sea­son which of­fi­cial­ly be­gan on June 1. She said there was need for im­prove­ment in the way the agen­cies and cit­i­zens of T&T re­spond­ed to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, in­clud­ing flood­ing. "It is most im­por­tant that we are more pre­pared to deal with such emer­gen­cies when they arise," she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said ad­di­tion­al mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed to as­sist in im­prov­ing the drainage net­work across the coun­try.

Al­so at the news con­fer­ence was CEO at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment, Dr Stephen Ram­roop, who said the stake­hold­er agen­cies were ready to deal with any nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in T&T. He said among ini­tia­tives to be im­ple­ment­ed was an ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tem, He said tele­phone providers would be used to en­sure text mes­sages were sent to cit­i­zens to take cer­tain mea­sures in the ad­vent of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion, Ver­non Per­sad, said in the case of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter mem­bers would en­sure food sup­plies were pro­vid­ed to af­fect­ed na­tion­als with­in 20 min­utes.