The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) is ad­vis­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic that Fri­day De­cem­ber 3 will be the last day items can be do­nat­ed at col­lec­tion cen­tres for hur­ri­cane-rav­aged St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

An ODPM re­lease said yes­ter­day over the past two weeks its of­fice part­nered with the Ad­ven­tist De­vel­op­ment and Re­lief Agency (ADRA) and the Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life (Feel) to es­tab­lish col­lec­tion cen­tres around the coun­try. "These col­lec­tion cen­tres were es­tab­lished to re­ceive and co-or­di­nate the do­na­tion of re­lief items for the storm-im­pact­ed is­lands of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and St Lu­cia.

"It has been rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful thus far. How­ev­er, in or­der to en­sure re­lief and aid con­tin­ue seam­less­ly, De­cem­ber 3 will be the last day that items can be do­nat­ed at Feel and ADRA venues for this ef­fort." The ODPM as­sured all do­nat­ed items would be pack­aged and de­liv­ered to na­tion­al dis­as­ter of­fices in the af­fect­ed coun­tries for dis­tri­b­u­tion. The of­fice al­so thanked all or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als that con­tributed to the dri­ve and com­mend­ed mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps and the T&T Cadet Force who as­sist­ed with the pack­ag­ing and dis­patch of the items.