Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Just over two years af­ter the launch of T&T’s Pub­lic Alert No­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (PANS), plans are now un­der­way to up­grade it in­to a more holis­tic, peo­ple-cen­tred plat­form.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment’s (ODPM) Al­ter­na­tive Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre in Mau­si­ca, CEO Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Rod­ney Smart said con­sul­ta­tions have be­gun with pub­lic and pri­vate stake­hold­ers to shape a na­tion­al pol­i­cy and ac­tion plan for a more in­te­grat­ed ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem.

“While the PANS has served us well, we recog­nised that sev­er­al na­tion­al agen­cies al­so use their own tech­nolo­gies to is­sue pub­lic alerts for spe­cif­ic haz­ards,” Smart ex­plained. “There was a clear need to in­te­grate these un­der one na­tion­al frame­work.”

That ef­fort has evolved in­to the “Strength­en­ing the In­te­grat­ed Na­tion­al Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go” ini­tia­tive, de­vel­oped by stake­hold­ers on the Na­tion­al Pre­ven­tion and Pre­pared­ness Mul­ti­sec­toral Com­mit­tee—in­clud­ing the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency. The project is sup­port­ed by the Japan Spe­cial Fund, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), and the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment.

“This is more than a tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sion,” Smart not­ed. “It’s a strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty to shape a na­tion­al pol­i­cy that di­rect­ly im­pacts how we re­duce dis­as­ter risk, pro­tect lives, and safe­guard liveli­hoods.”

The goal is to es­tab­lish a ro­bust, in­te­grat­ed sys­tem ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing time­ly, ac­cu­rate mul­ti-haz­ard alerts—from se­vere weath­er and coastal in­un­da­tion to earth­quakes, in­dus­tri­al ac­ci­dents, and the es­ca­lat­ing im­pacts of cli­mate change.

“The haz­ards fac­ing our coun­try are no longer oc­ca­sion­al,” Smart said. “They are in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent, com­plex, and in­ter­linked.”

How­ev­er, he stressed that the ef­fec­tive­ness of any warn­ing sys­tem de­pends on a strong pol­i­cy foun­da­tion.

“This is the gap we’re here to ad­dress to­day—a gov­er­nance struc­ture that pro­vides in­sti­tu­tion­al clar­i­ty and strate­gic di­rec­tion.”

He urged pub­lic sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives to re­flect on their cur­rent ca­pa­bil­i­ties and to iden­ti­fy strengths, gaps, and pri­or­i­ties for im­prov­ing na­tion­al re­silience.

“Ear­ly warn­ing must not on­ly be about tech­nol­o­gy,” he said. “It must be about peo­ple—es­pe­cial­ly those at the last mile of every com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work. It’s about trust. It’s about im­pact. And ul­ti­mate­ly, it’s about car­ing for our cit­i­zens and our vis­i­tors.”

The ODPM and its part­ners aim to have a draft pol­i­cy ready next month.