Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning says T&T will give US$1mil­lion to Haiti to as­sist its dis­as­ter re­lief, fol­low­ing Tues­day's 7.3 earth­quake which caused ex­ten­sive dam­age and a sig­nif­i­cant loss of life. Man­ning re­vealed this in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Par­lia­ment at the Red House. Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment was "quite tak­en aback by the fact the Haiti ex­pe­ri­enced a 7.3 quake for one minute and we ex­pect­ed the de­struc­tion to be very mas­sive." He said the T&T Gov­ern­ment was await­ing a re­port from the Cari­com mis­sion in Port-au-Prince.

Man­ning said the T&T Gov­ern­ment would like to hear from Haitians on the ex­act na­ture of as­sis­tance re­quired from T&T. "At any rate, we have tak­en a de­ci­sion to com­mit US$1mil­lion to the Hait­ian ef­fort im­me­di­ate­ly," he said. Man­ning said fur­ther as­sis­tance from T&T was not un­like­ly. "Things are very tight with us fi­nan­cial­ly in T&T now but they are im­mea­sur­ably worse with the Haitians," he added. Man­ning said the lat­est tragedy "re­minds me of the (need for the ) pro­pos­al that we have put to the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as where we had called for a spe­cial fund (to be set up) for Haiti, to be con­tributed to by all states in the west­ern hemi­sphere."

Man­ning said the pro­pos­al was now be­ing worked on at the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS). Man­ning said Haiti was a re­gion­al prob­lem be­fore Mon­day's dis­as­ter. "This dis­as­ter has ag­gra­vat­ed it," he added. In ex­tend­ing his Gov­ern­ment's sym­pa­thies to the Hait­ian Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple, Man­ning said he had been try­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly to con­tact Pres­i­dent Rene Preval. Asked if T&T was pre­pared to send troops to the Cari­com na­tion, Man­ning said: "It de­pends on what the prob­lem is. Let us (wait and) see. Haiti is a Cari­com coun­try and we take that in­to ac­count on how we treat with the is­sue." And the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Ash­worth Jack, says his par­ty, the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Peo­ple (TOP), has launched a "To­ba­go for Haiti" ini­tia­tive, where cit­i­zens would be asked to do­nate clothes, food­stuff and wa­ter at the TOP of­fices, Pic­ton Street, Scar­bor­ough.