Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

By 2030, Port-of-Spain will be a “re­silient” city. This is the goal of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion which has part­nered with the US­AID and Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty.

Speak­ing at the launch of the project, May­or Joel Mar­tinez said, “We have done a lot of plan­ning and Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty has come to the aid of the city of Port-of-Spain. When Habi­tat ap­proached the city coun­cil, we were won­der­ing how do you make Port-of-Spain a re­silient city? We don’t have the re­sources, man­pow­er, the frame­work to re­al­ly do any­thing about it.”

De­spite this, the may­or said the cor­po­ra­tion took the de­ci­sion to ac­cept the chal­lenge.

“Op­por­tu­ni­ties when you get it, you should look at it from a pos­i­tive per­spec­tive and I would say that I am bit emo­tion­al about it be­cause we have seen Port-of- Spain over the years—a city we all love dear­ly—we should be proud of our city and proud of where we have reached but like any­one else, there are un­der­ly­ing faults in the city,” he ad­mit­ted.

“Every time rain falls in Mar­aval or Cas­cade, the Port-of-Spain city feels the pain of the rain­fall, not the joy but pain be­cause we are al­ways clean­ing up,” Mar­tinez not­ed.

There are 10 es­sen­tials in the project.

Among the plans out­lined in the project are, es­tab­lish and cod­i­fy the func­tion­ing of the City Task Force for Re­silience, in­ven­to­ry and analy­sis of all city func­tions re­lat­ed to re­silience, up­date the 2014 Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy Frame­work in keep­ing with Sendai Frame­work, com­pre­hen­sive new Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Leg­is­la­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the role of all state agen­cies in build­ing re­silience in City.

Oth­ers in­clude re­duce build­ing in­sur­ance costs for the busi­ness sec­tor, de­vel­op a pi­lot mi­cro in­sur­ance project for low-in­come com­mu­ni­ty and as­sess­ment of re­duc­ing risk in pub­lic build­ings.

The groups hope to achieve these plans in the short to medi­um term.

Mar­tinez as­sured that this project is not just a “talk shop” but an ac­tion plan that is go­ing to hap­pen.

“I know over the years Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty has put their mon­ey where their mouth is,” he af­firmed.

Mean­while, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land said he ex­pects that lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form will great­ly con­tribute to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the city.

“With this leg­isla­tive struc­ture, I see that the task force role will be im­proved and be­come more ef­fi­cient and there­fore, I say this is an ex­cit­ing time for this project to be im­ple­ment­ed,” Scot­land said.

He com­mit­ted to work­ing with the group on this ini­tia­tive.

‘Even though I had Par­lia­ment to­day there was noth­ing that would stop me from com­ing to this event and sup­port­ing this,” Scot­land added.

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