Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Re­lief is pour­ing in for St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Grena­da, with four ship­ping con­tain­ers filled with sup­plies ready to be de­liv­ered to those af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

In a demon­stra­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has al­so sent sup­plies via the Galleons Pas­sage car­go ves­sel.

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan, along­side Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, over­saw the load­ing of re­lief sup­plies at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

These es­sen­tial sup­plies, do­nat­ed by var­i­ous mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, were dis­patched on Mon­day. T&T sent a ship­ment of vi­tal sup­plies to Grena­da and up­on the Galleons Pas­sage’s re­turn from Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, an­oth­er ship­ment will prompt­ly de­part for Grena­da to fur­ther aug­ment re­lief ef­forts.

Lo­cal­ly, cit­i­zens and the pri­vate sec­tor joined hands at Cap­i­tal Sig­nal in Care­nage, where ship­ping con­tain­ers were be­ing filled with food, toi­letries, and build­ing sup­plies. The com­pa­ny has been the first to of­fer re­lief to those af­fect­ed by the hur­ri­cane.

Re­lief co­or­di­na­tor Adam Ros­tant said, “We did some­thing sim­i­lar for Do­mini­ca, and this is a very big ef­fort from those who want to help. We are hap­py for peo­ple to help as they got hit; we knew that it would be bad, and it was ob­vi­ous. A lot of the small­er is­lands al­so need as­sis­tance, so we just sprang in­to ac­tion. To be hon­est, we are so deep in­to this, work­ing all hours of the day and in­to the night.”

He con­tin­ued, “As you can imag­ine, it is an im­mense cost for many peo­ple to run an op­er­a­tion like this. We are do­ing as much as we can or as much as the fa­cil­i­ty can ac­com­mo­date. We are ac­cept­ing items up un­til to­day, as to­day is the last day for ac­cept­ing. We will be very busy pack­ag­ing and work­ing out the next leg of lo­gis­tics to get it on the ves­sel and to the ar­eas of need.”

Ros­tant said they were not sure which port they would go to, but they were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the au­thor­i­ties in the is­lands.

An­i­mals and pets were not for­got­ten. A new­ly formed non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion led by Joshua Ho­sein called the Love Com­pa­ny TT, along with the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals, do­nat­ed over 36,000 pounds of an­i­mal feed.

Ho­sein said, “We en­cour­age every­one to get in­volved be­cause these do­na­tions can go very far. Peo­ple tend to fo­cus just on peo­ple, but we must re­mem­ber that if the source of food col­laps­es be­cause they can­not feed their live­stock an­i­mals, it af­fects the is­lands great­ly. It’s not just about putting a tarp over your house; we are go­ing to have weeks of re­cov­ery, and we want to bring their na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture back to nor­mal as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

With re­gard to the of­fer of refuge for school-age chil­dren from hur­ri­cane-rav­aged re­gions in Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in­formed the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment it should be fa­cil­i­tat­ed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. 

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his Aber­crom­by Street of­fice yes­ter­day, Hinds said the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) was help­ing co­or­di­nate re­lief ef­forts by T&T. 

Re­gard­ing the con­cerns raised by yachties that the process to be reg­is­tered at the Ch­aguara­mas port was too lengthy, Hinds said the num­ber of yachties over­whelmed the staff which was in­creased yes­ter­day. 

“It was an emer­gency, it was not ex­pect­ed, we did not have the strength down there, even this morn­ing we sent some more im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers. From the re­ports I have seen, and I have been hear­ing from the yachties, notwith­stand­ing what­ev­er lit­tle en­cum­brances are, they are quite hap­py to have found safe haven in Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

He said the lit­tle is­sues of pa­per­work “pales in­to in­signif­i­cance” as he was thank­ful that the coun­try was spared and in a po­si­tion to as­sist oth­er coun­tries ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by Beryl.