Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

New­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath has wast­ed no time in mak­ing his dis­ap­point­ment about how the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) op­er­ates known.

Speak­ing dur­ing the launch of the 18th Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum at the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Train­ing Cen­tre at North Bank Road, Pi­ar­co, yes­ter­day, Padarath said he is un­hap­py with how the na­tion­al agency re­sponds to flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

“I al­ways say when com­mu­ni­ca­tion breaks down and the left hand is not speak­ing to the right hand. It is a recipe for dis­as­ter. There­fore, if you have an or­gan­i­sa­tion for dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness man­age­ment, there must be prepa­ra­tion, there must be com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­cause as far as I see, while to­day we kick off the ob­ser­vances of dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness month, we are far from be­ing pre­pared,” Padarath told the gath­er­ing while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress.

Padarath se­vere­ly crit­i­cised the agency, urg­ing bet­ter re­spon­sive­ness to the needs of vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

“Over the years, I have not been sat­is­fied, nei­ther have I been hap­py with the re­sponse from some of these crit­i­cal stake­hold­ers, one of those crit­i­cal stake­hold­ers has been the ODPM,” Padarath said, even as the ODPM CEO, re­tired ma­jor gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart, sat in the au­di­ence, hav­ing de­liv­ered his pre­sen­ta­tion ahead of the min­is­ter.

The min­is­ter’s re­marks came just days af­ter some parts of the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing over the week­end and as Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ters the Wet Sea­son, which cli­mate ex­perts pre­dict could see in­creased rain­fall and a height­ened risk of flood­ing.

Giv­ing some con­text to his com­plaint about the ODPM’s re­sponse to flood­ing woes ex­pe­ri­enced an­nu­al­ly by cit­i­zens, Padarath said, “I used to rep­re­sent a con­stituen­cy called Princes Town and when I look across this room I re­call stake­hold­ers com­ing to the con­stituen­cy of Princes Town, pro­vid­ing plat­i­tudes at a time when you need­ed a greater de­gree of re­spon­sive­ness and that is what cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pect. And while I know there will be lim­i­ta­tions from time to time, there is a cer­tain de­gree of re­spon­sive­ness that is need­ed in terms of im­me­di­a­cy when you treat with these mat­ters.”

He said over the years, res­i­dents across sev­er­al flood-af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties have voiced grow­ing frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribed as a slug­gish and in­ad­e­quate re­sponse from state agen­cies fol­low­ing heavy rain­fall that in­un­dat­ed homes, roads, and farm­land.

He fur­ther de­scribed the re­al­i­ties faced by cit­i­zens dur­ing dis­as­ters and the aid met­ed out to them by the au­thor­i­ties as a “dis­con­nect.”

“ODPM has to be­come more re­spon­sive. The ODPM has to come out of the ivory tow­ers and un­der­stand what the chal­lenges are when we have sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall, but it is not just rain­fall. While this morn­ing we’re here in this en­vi­ron­ment, that we’re deal­ing with a stake­hold­er sort of ap­proach, which is an an­nu­al event, I want you to ac­cept my chal­lenge that this should not just be an an­nu­al talk shop.”

Ad­dress­ing Padarath’s crit­i­cism af­ter­wards, ODPM CEO Smart main­tained a calm pos­ture, say­ing he be­lieved the min­is­ter’s view on the agency’s lack of re­spon­sive­ness was mis­guid­ed.

“The ODPM can­not get in­volved un­less there is a re­quest for sup­port but mind you, the ODPM is all the time mon­i­tor­ing and reach­ing out so the re­spon­sive­ness he spoke to is built in­to the sys­tem. But some­how I think the min­is­ter didn’t re­alise that the first re­sponse, ac­cord­ing to the na­tion­al dis­as­ter sys­tem, is re­sponse you get at the lo­cal lev­el and once the lo­cal lev­el is un­able to man­age the sit­u­a­tion then they will reach out to the ODPM.”

He al­so said he was not con­cerned about the se­cu­ri­ty of his po­si­tion in light of the min­is­ter’s scold­ing.

“In terms of be­ing wor­ried, not at all. My pur­pose is to serve Trinidad and To­ba­go and to sup­port any ad­min­is­tra­tion that comes in­to pow­er. That is my job and the job of all the peo­ple in the ODPM. The ODPM will al­ways be sup­port­ive of whichev­er ad­min­is­tra­tion is in pow­er.”

Smart’s con­tract comes up for re­new­al at the end of the year. He has been lead­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion since 2019.

Smart al­so con­firmed that he is sched­uled to meet with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained from the ODPM’s web­site, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s prin­ci­pal fo­cus is “to strength­en the na­tion’s abil­i­ty to pre­vent, mit­i­gate, pre­pare for, re­spond to and re­cov­er ef­fec­tive­ly from se­vere haz­ards and com­plex emer­gen­cies that may threat­en our so­ci­ety.”

To ac­com­plish this, it said it takes “an in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to re­duc­ing dis­as­ter and cli­mate risks and man­ag­ing dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tions, when lo­cal-lev­el ca­pac­i­ties are over­whelmed.”