CEO of AM­CHAM T&T, Ni­rad Tewarie, says plan­ning is key to mit­i­gat­ing the im­pact of se­vere weath­er dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

He was speak­ing as AM­CHAM T&T part­nered with the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) to host the Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity Train­ing Work­shop for Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion last week Thurs­day.

The event was held in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Pre­ven­tion and Pre­pared­ness Month (NDPP) which is ob­served an­nu­al­ly in May and wel­comed 26 par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions in the pri­vate sec­tor.

Dur­ing this month, a call to ac­tion is made to en­cour­age all in­di­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties, the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, and NGOs to be­come more in­volved in dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion and pre­pared­ness ac­tiv­i­ties be­fore the com­mence­ment of the At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son which starts on June 1st and ends on No­vem­ber 30.

"We have seen the im­pacts of cli­mate change on our na­tion. Ex­treme weath­er events rep­re­sent a ma­jor hu­man­i­tar­i­an and eco­nom­ic chal­lenge for busi­ness and for every cit­i­zen," said Ni­rad Tewarie, CEO of AM­CHAM T&T.

He added, "Hav­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan that ad­dress­es the unique risks fac­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions can help mit­i­gate the im­pact of a cat­a­stroph­ic event. This in­cludes iden­ti­fy­ing po­ten­tial threats, de­vel­op­ing evac­u­a­tion and shel­ter­ing strate­gies, es­tab­lish­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols, and en­sur­ing ac­cess to crit­i­cal re­sources to save lives and keep our busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing. At AM­CHAM T&T, we are com­mit­ted to build­ing re­silience with­in the pri­vate sec­tor to mit­i­gate some of these im­pacts while cre­at­ing a path­way to dis­as­ter readi­ness and re­silience in our coun­try."