Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Unit­ed States Em­bassy has do­nat­ed US$265,000 worth of dis­as­ter re­sponse ware­house equip­ment to the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA).

The do­na­tion was made on Tues­day at the TEMA dis­as­ter re­lief ware­house in Sig­nal Hill, which was con­struct­ed in 2016 with sup­port from the US South­ern Com­mand Hu­man­i­tar­i­an As­sis­tance Pro­gramme.

Among the do­nat­ed items were a fork­lift, a CCTV se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, a ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in­ven­to­ry sys­tem, a pal­let jack, push-back shelv­ing units, in­dus­tri­al work­bench­es and print­ers.

Fif­teen TEMA per­son­nel al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in a five-day train­ing pro­gramme in March fo­cused on dis­as­ter re­lief ware­house man­age­ment and ware­house in­ven­to­ry con­trol soft­ware.

US Chargé d’Af­faires Philip Kern told the me­dia that the US re­mained com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing To­ba­go’s dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and im­prov­ing its emer­gency re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties. He said the equip­ment would help save lives dur­ing emer­gen­cies.

“This part­ner­ship demon­strates some­thing we hold cen­tral to our en­gage­ment. Our com­mit­ment to Trinidad and To­ba­go is not just about man­ag­ing crises to­geth­er, it’s about build­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty, self-re­liance and re­silience to al­low this na­tion to lead its own dis­as­ter re­sponse to­day and in the fu­ture,” Kern said.

TEMA Di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the sup­port from the US Em­bassy.

Re­fer­ring to the twin earth­quakes that dev­as­tat­ed parts of Venezuela ear­li­er this month, Stew­art said, “When your neigh­bour house on fire, you wet yours.”

He said the part­ner­ship be­tween TEMA and the US Em­bassy has been long­stand­ing and con­tin­ues to grow.

“I want to give you the as­sur­ance, what has been demon­strat­ed here to­day goes a long way in keep­ing our is­land safe,” Stew­art said.

Stew­art said the do­nat­ed equip­ment would as­sist TEMA in re­spond­ing to fu­ture chal­lenges, adding that build­ing ca­pac­i­ty re­mains crit­i­cal.

“All of us on the is­land here feel stronger and bet­ter. We feel the spir­it of re­silience as we con­tin­ue to build and ex­pand,” he added.