In con­tin­ued part­ner­ship with the T&T Gov­ern­ment, the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment do­nat­ed two sport util­i­ty Jeeps, 18 Sam­sung Galaxy tablets, and 195 hand crank ra­dios val­ued at US$255,000 to the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM).

Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo pre­sent­ed the do­na­tion to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young and ODPM Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Rod­ney Smart at the Emer­gency Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre in Mau­si­ca on Tues­day. They both ac­knowl­edged the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and re­sponse, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the ad­di­tion­al chal­lenges posed by the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Am­bas­sador Mon­del­lo pledged con­tin­ued US sup­port for dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and em­pha­sized “the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing na­tion­al lev­el agen­cies have the equip­ment and re­sources to rapid­ly re­spond dur­ing hur­ri­cane and flood sea­son.”