The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) is co­or­di­nat­ing the ship­ment of a fur­ther 100 pal­lets of wa­ter to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has con­firmed.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the Min­istry to­day, the ad­di­tion­al ship­ment is ex­pect­ed to leave T&T to­day, via Trop­i­cal Ship­ping.

The ODPM col­lect­ed some 260 tonnes of re­lief items, which were trans­port­ed on Tues­day 13th April 2021, to Kingstown, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG), via the Galleons Pas­sage and the C26 Air­craft at­tached to the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF).

That ini­tial ship­ment in­clud­ed wa­ter, food es­sen­tials, san­i­tary sup­plies, tents, med­ical sup­plies, hy­giene ma­te­ri­als, clean­ing sup­plies, Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE), as well as oth­er items re­quest­ed such as wa­ter tanks and buck­ets.

In ad­di­tion, the Min­istry al­so de­ployed some 50 mem­bers of the TTDF along with those re­lief sup­plies, to pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to the SVG, in the wake of con­tin­u­ous erup­tions from the La Soufrière Vol­cano.

The TTDF con­tin­gent was com­prised of per­son­nel from En­gi­neer­ing, In­fantry/Provost, Med­ical and Lo­gis­tics.  They were ac­com­pa­nied by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS) and the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA).

On its re­turn voy­age from de­posit­ing the re­lief sup­plies and hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid teams, the Galleons Pas­sage repa­tri­at­ed some 75 T&T na­tion­als who were in the SVG at the time of the vol­cano’s erup­tions.  They ar­rived this morn­ing (Thurs­day April 15th).

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ports that these na­tion­als cur­rent­ly are un­der quar­an­tine, in ac­cor­dance with the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

The Min­istry al­so is ad­vis­ing all cit­i­zens and cor­po­rate bod­ies wish­ing to con­tribute goods, ser­vices and their time to as­sist the peo­ple of the SVG, to do so through the ODPM, which has an on-go­ing col­lec­tion dri­ve.