Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen says she is in­tro­duc­ing a sig­nif­i­cant change in the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy re­gard­ing dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and shel­ter alerts.

As the rainy sea­son ap­proach­es, the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing from a re­ac­tive cri­sis man­age­ment ap­proach to a proac­tive flood pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy. For res­i­dents in flood-prone ar­eas such as Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, this shift may pro­vide long-await­ed re­lief.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and sur­round­ing flood-prone ar­eas yes­ter­day, Ameen out­lined plans to tran­si­tion away from cost­ly news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments to­wards di­rect com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment.

“We are go­ing to be sav­ing mon­ey in one of the oth­er arms,” Ameen said.

“When it is time for shel­ters in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be ac­ti­vat­ed, the ODPM and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions of­ten spend a lot on full-page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments.”

She not­ed that these ef­forts fre­quent­ly do not reach the peo­ple most at risk.

“The tar­get au­di­ence, the peo­ple who are af­fect­ed and should be evac­u­at­ed, of­ten do not re­ceive the mes­sage. The min­istry will now adopt a more grass­roots com­mu­ni­ca­tion ap­proach.

“We will vis­it homes, de­liv­er lit­er­a­ture in­to mail­box­es, go in­to schools, use the com­mu­ni­ty mic-in sys­tem for an­nounce­ments, and hold com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings. This shift will save the gov­ern­ment a con­sid­er­able amount of mon­ey and en­sure more ef­fec­tive en­gage­ment.”

When asked about en­gi­neer­ing ca­pac­i­ty across the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, the min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the need for im­prove­ment and cit­ed ex­ist­ing chal­lenges.

“I be­lieve in strength­en­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment,” she said.

She al­so spoke about the his­tor­i­cal un­der­fund­ing of lo­cal cor­po­ra­tions.

“You can­not give them lim­it­ed fund­ing year af­ter year and then be up­set when the work is not done. The ones who suf­fer are the burgess­es.”

Ameen was ac­com­pa­nied by Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Sha­van­na Sam, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip and mem­bers of the coun­cil. She con­firmed that dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ments are un­der­way in all re­gions.

“Yes, we do have a sched­ule. We will be vis­it­ing every re­gion. But I want to em­pha­sise that work is on­go­ing in every re­gion, every day.”

Sam al­so said proac­tive steps are be­ing tak­en this year to ad­dress an­nu­al flood­ing in the area.

“We are be­ing proac­tive this time. We are not wait­ing for the flood­ing to oc­cur to be­gin tak­ing ac­tion,” she said dur­ing a site vis­it.

“We are do­ing the nec­es­sary work be­fore the heavy rains be­gin, and we ex­pect a de­crease in flood­ing this year.”

Chair­man Phillip ex­pressed his hope that many res­i­dents af­fect­ed by flood­ing will ben­e­fit from the ini­tia­tives.

Some res­i­dents de­scribed the vis­it as en­cour­ag­ing, not­ing that ma­jor flood­ing and de­lays in clean­ing riv­er cours­es re­main key is­sues.