Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Dis­as­ter man­age­ment ex­perts say while they un­der­stand the frus­tra­tions ex­pressed by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath about the op­er­a­tions of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Man­age­ment (ODPM), in­suf­fi­cient leg­is­la­tion and in­ad­e­quate re­sources hin­der the agency’s abil­i­ty to meet his ex­pec­ta­tions.

Padarath made scathing crit­i­cisms of the ODPM in the pres­ence of its CEO Ma­jor Gen­era Rod­ney Smart at the launch of the 18th Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum in Pi­ar­co on Wednes­day.

The min­is­ter ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in the agency’s re­sponse to flood­ing and called for the ODPM to “come out of the ivory tow­ers” and be more re­spon­sive.

For­mer ODPM CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop, who led the agency from 2011-2015, said the Dis­as­ter Mea­sures Act of 1978 which gov­erns the agency needs to be up­dat­ed.

De­scrib­ing the leg­is­la­tion as “vast­ly out­dat­ed and ar­cha­ic”, Ram­roop ex­plained, “The ODPM has no leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty to en­gage any stake­hold­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s just by friend­ship and work­ing to­geth­er, and if the agen­cies de­cide to send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges we had when I was CEO is that we would have 26 emer­gency ser­vice func­tion­al­i­ties of all the dif­fer­ent min­istries, etc, from health, Red Cross, am­bu­lance, and you would get on­ly about ten to 15 peo­ple com­ing to meet­ings be­cause we had no leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty.

“Un­like TEMA (To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty), when they say you have to come, you have to come.”

Asked for his rec­om­men­da­tions for pos­si­ble amend­ments, Ram­roop said, “The first and most im­por­tant one is the abil­i­ty to en­gage all the rel­e­vant key stake­hold­ers. I mean, that is clear­ly a big is­sue.

“The sec­ond one is the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly us­ing tools that are avail­able now with AI and so­cial me­dia, which ob­vi­ous­ly, as you can well imag­ine, is very, very, very im­por­tant and has fur­ther reach than tra­di­tion­al me­dia.

“The third and most im­por­tant thing is the cus­toms part of our leg­is­la­tion. This is where, when I was at ODPM, we found that 27 oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion need to be amend­ed in keep­ing with the mod­el dis­as­ter mea­sures, the Dis­as­ter Mod­el Act that has been prop­a­gat­ed by CD­MA.”

Speak­ing on Wednes­day in de­fence of his agency, CEO Smart said the min­is­ter might not re­alise that the first re­spon­ders in the na­tion­al dis­as­ter sys­tem were at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el and not the ODPM.

How­ev­er, Ram­roop did not ac­cept that. The for­mer CEO said Padarath was not stu­pid and would be aware of that.

“The thing about it is that ODPM has to get in­volved. It’s not that you have to wait un­til the lo­cal gov­ern­ment calls you or any oth­er agency calls you,” he said

“They are the cen­tral mon­i­tor­ing and co­or­di­nat­ing agency. At this point in time, ten years af­ter leav­ing ODPM, I would have ex­pect­ed with cur­rent AI tech­nolo­gies and im­proved map­ping that the ODPM would have been in a po­si­tion with the Met Of­fice to or­gan­ise a cer­tain amount of prob­a­bil­i­ty in­for­ma­tion sys­tem that would have ad­vised the lo­cal gov­ern­ment and oth­er agen­cies and the pub­lic as to where the im­pact would be most se­vere.”

A dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion sub­ject mat­ter ex­pert, who asked for anonymi­ty, had more sym­pa­thy for Smart.

“Lo­cal gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble for your first re­sponse, so they will lit­er­al­ly get out there first, do what they have to do. There are 14 cor­po­ra­tions, and the re­sources of the cor­po­ra­tions are used to re­spond to in­ci­dents. It’s on­ly when that sys­tem is ex­haust­ed that it should reach out to ODPM.”

The ex­pert added, “There are three lev­els of re­sponse, so at lev­el one is the cor­po­rate, is the mu­nic­i­pal. Lev­el two is all the cor­po­ra­tions.

“When lo­cal gov­ern­ment can no longer re­spond to the in­ci­dent, then state re­sources and over­seas as­sis­tance can be had and that is where the ODPM will co­or­di­nate from a cen­tral body along with lo­cal gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly on the di­rec­tive of the gov­ern­ment to deal with those is­sues.”

He said for the ODPM to op­er­ate out­side its man­date would be akin to go­ing in­to some­one else’s home and mov­ing fur­ni­ture around with­out their per­mis­sion.

The ex­pert said he un­der­stood Padarath’s po­si­tion and would not say his com­ments were un­fair.

“It could be based on his ex­pec­ta­tion and not hav­ing a full un­der­stand­ing of the frame­work,” he said.

How­ev­er, he too be­lieves there must be sweep­ing changes to the ODPM for Padarath’s ex­pec­ta­tions to be met.

“It re­quires leg­isla­tive change. It re­quires giv­ing the ODPM the re­sources to do all those sorts of things, be­cause ODPM does not have heavy equip­ment. But it could co­or­di­nate the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of heavy equip­ment.”