Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has reached out to Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness as Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, a Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm that is fore­cast to be the most pow­er­ful storm in Ja­maica’s his­to­ry, is ex­pect­ed to make land­fall to­day, bring­ing cat­a­stroph­ic winds and flood­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter said yes­ter­day that she had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Hol­ness and as­sured him that T&T’s Gov­ern­ment was mo­bil­is­ing to pro­vide im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance to Ja­maica in the af­ter­math of the storm.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to of­fer man­pow­er, tech­ni­cal re­sources, emer­gency sup­plies, and food­stuff to aid any re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts. It added that the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF), the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Min­istry of De­fence, and the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs will work co­he­sive­ly to de­liv­er crit­i­cal sup­port to en­sure a co­or­di­nat­ed na­tion­al re­sponse.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so plans to launch a na­tion­al col­lec­tion dri­ve to en­cour­age cit­i­zens, busi­ness­es, com­mu­ni­ty groups, and or­gan­i­sa­tions to do­nate es­sen­tial items at col­lec­tion venues to be an­nounced soon.

T&T’s Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs said it has been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the High Com­mis­sion in Ja­maica to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vide as­sis­tance to cit­i­zens there, but fol­low­ing con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion about as­sis­tance over the week­end, T&T na­tion­als study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Mona cam­pus are ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment for im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion, stat­ing that the up­dates pri­or to the storm’s im­pact were in­ad­e­quate.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme on Mon­day, culi­nary stu­dent Ray Clarke voiced dis­ap­point­ment over what he saw as in­ad­e­quate sup­port.

“I would charge the gov­ern­ment, you know, to try to com­mu­ni­cate with us more. You know, try to be for us, be there for us in a time like this,” Clarke said.

He added that stu­dents felt “un­heard” and were made to seem as though they were ex­ag­ger­at­ing their cir­cum­stances when they spoke out about the lim­it­ed as­sis­tance avail­able.

“Even though they couldn’t bring them home, they could have at least tried to put more ef­fort in­to try­ing to lend greater as­sis­tance,” Clarke said.