Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali said the Guyana De­fence Force (GDF) and the Civ­il De­fence Com­mis­sion (CDC) are ful­ly pre­pared to sup­port Ja­maica as the coun­try braces for Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

In a state­ment on Sun­day, Pres­i­dent Ali said his Gov­ern­ment stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ja­maica and with Guyanese, in­clud­ing stu­dents, liv­ing on the is­land.

“I’ve sent off a let­ter to the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica telling them that the Guyana De­fence Force and the CDC are ful­ly mo­bilised and stand ready to sup­port every ef­fort in this sit­u­a­tion. I want to ask all of you to re­main safe, re­main calm, sup­port each oth­er, and know that we are putting a full mech­a­nism in place,” Pres­i­dent Ali said.

He al­so stat­ed that the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion has been di­rect­ed to work with the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er stake­hold­ers to co­or­di­nate as­sis­tance for stu­dents and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies in Ja­maica.

Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, a cat­e­go­ry four sys­tem, is ex­pect­ed to make land­fall be­tween Mon­day night and Tues­day morn­ing. The storm, which strength­ened overnight, is al­ready pro­duc­ing flood­ing across parts of Ja­maica.

The Pres­i­dent said Guyana re­mains com­mit­ted to re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion and will pro­vide sup­port wher­ev­er pos­si­ble through es­tab­lished emer­gency chan­nels.