Pe­ter Bal­roop

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning will fly out to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, next door to Haiti, to­mor­row to meet Eu­ro­pean Union lead­ers and oth­er Cari­com heads to dis­cuss how earth­quake-strick­en Haiti can be helped. And, the T&T Gov­ern­ment has not rushed De­fence Force per­son­nel and Cepep work­ers to as­sist Haiti as it did when Hur­ri­cane Ivan dev­as­tat­ed Grena­da, be­cause Haiti is in the north Caribbean. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph made this clear at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, which out­lined how T&T will be as­sist­ing. He said Ja­maica is in charge of the Cari­com dis­as­ter re­lief re­sponse for the north Caribbean and that ex­plains why there are now 200 Ja­maica De­fence Force sol­diers on the ground in Haiti.

ODPM co­or­di­nates re­lief...cash, goods, ser­vices

Joseph, and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon dis­closed the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) had been giv­en the task of co­or­di­nat­ing the re­lief ef­fort in terms of cash, goods and ser­vices. So far, it was learnt, the T&T Gov­ern­ment has not made any con­tri­bu­tion in any cat­e­go­ry to Haiti, but the min­is­ters de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment when the point was raised that there seemed to be no sense of ur­gency about the re­lief ef­fort.

ODPM chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Colonel George Robin­son said the earth­quake on­ly hap­pened last Tues­day and lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lems get­ting to Haiti would have made any di­rect ef­fort fu­tile. Robin­son then out­lined how cash col­lect­ed would be for­ward­ed to the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) based in Bar­ba­dos. Goods and ser­vices that T&T had to of­fer would go to Ja­maica and be chan­nelled to Haiti through the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Re­lief Unit (CDRU), said Robin­son.

'Col­lec­tion or­der­ly, trans­par­ent, ef­fi­cient'

How much cash had been col­lect­ed so far to back up the US$1 mil­lion that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was pre­pared to do­nate to Haiti, Robin­son could not say. How­ev­er, the ODPM was de­ter­mined to make the col­lec­tion of cash and goods "or­der­ly, trans­par­ent and ef­fi­cient," and would part­ner with NGOs, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions in the re­lief ef­fort. Top of the list of goods need­ed, said Robin­son, was potable wa­ter, med­ical sup­plies, canned goods and oth­er non-per­ish­able items. Col­lec­tion cen­tres were pro­vid­ed by the Ad­ven­tist Dis­as­ter Re­lief Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Unit­ed Way, T&T Cham­ber, Red Cross, T&T De­fence Force, T&T Cadet Force and Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty.

FCB ac­count to be set up to­day

Re­ceipts will be is­sued to all donors, to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty, said Robin­son. An ac­count will be set up at First Cit­i­zens Bank by to­mor­row for cit­i­zens who wish to make fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to the re­lief ef­fort. Robin­son said the ODPM was pre­pared to han­dle the re­lief ef­fort should an earth­quake strike T&T. Gopee-Scoon said Man­ning will be back in Trinidad by to­mor­row evening and the Gov­ern­ment will be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to de­cide how to pro­ceed. She said the death toll could climb to 200,000 and the Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mates there are over 300,000 in­jured peo­ple in Port-au-Prince. The Gov­ern­ment felt the great­est em­pa­thy with the Hait­ian peo­ple and re­gret­ted that so many chil­dren had be­come or­phans, said Gopee-Scoon.