The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment host­ed a part­ner­ship strength­en­ing meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of five (5) diplo­mat­ic mis­sions on Wednes­day 15th June 2022 in its con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to im­prove the coun­try’s dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, re­sponse and re­cov­ery ef­forts.

De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from the ODPM:

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), in its con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to im­prove the coun­try’s dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, re­sponse and re­cov­ery ef­forts, host­ed a part­ner­ship strength­en­ing meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of five (5) diplo­mat­ic mis­sions on Wednes­day 15th June, 2022. The meet­ing, which was held at the ODPM’s Mau­si­ca Al­ter­nate Na­tion­al Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (ANEOC), was at­tend­ed by del­e­gates from Aus­tralia, Cana­da, the Nether­lands, Spain and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

In wel­com­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the ANEOC, the CEO of the ODPM, Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Rod­ney Smart, not­ed “As a Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing State, we are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed and vul­ner­a­ble to many haz­ards. Thank­ful­ly, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, we have re­ceived sup­port from your na­tions, and to us, your vis­it to­day, marks an­oth­er crit­i­cal point in the dri­ve to­wards col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ship, in strength­en­ing Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion and Man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clu­sive of that of your cit­i­zens liv­ing, work­ing and vis­it­ing here.”

Mr. An­war Baksh, the ODPM’s Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer, pre­sent­ed a brief on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dis­as­ter readi­ness and re­silience ini­tia­tives, and the coun­try’s align­ment with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al frame­works. He re­it­er­at­ed that the ODPM con­tin­ues to fos­ter lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships, and through the sup­port and kind do­na­tions of the var­i­ous diplo­mat­ic mis­sions, the Of­fice is bet­ter able to boost the na­tion’s dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion and pre­pared­ness ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The diplo­mats ex­pressed var­i­ous in­ter­ests in un­der­stand­ing how emer­gency alerts could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to their cit­i­zens and the pub­lic in gen­er­al. They learnt that the ODPM is in the ear­ly stages of tri­als for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Na­tion­al Pub­lic Alert Sys­tem. Dis­cus­sions al­so in­clud­ed emer­gency telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems, and par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Port of Spain Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit’s evac­u­a­tion mea­sures.

The meet­ing end­ed with all bod­ies agree­ing to con­tin­ue the in­ter­ac­tion and sup­port to each oth­er. The ODPM is com­mit­ted to such en­gage­ments with the diplo­mat­ic corps and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies, as it recog­nis­es the op­por­tu­ni­ties they bring to com­ple­ment­ing Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Pre­ven­tion and Pre­pared­ness ini­tia­tives, such as last month’s stepped-up ac­tiv­i­ties, in prepa­ra­tion for the 2022 Wet and Hur­ri­cane Sea­sons.