Kevon Felmine

With the hur­ri­cane sea­son up­on us, chair­man of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Dr Stephen Ram­roop, has in­vit­ed Ro­tar­i­ans across the coun­try to part­ner with his agency to deal with dis­as­ters. Ram­roop was speak­ing at the Ro­tary Club of San Fer­nan­do South hand­ing over and award cer­e­mo­ny, held at Ho­race's Gar­den Restau­rant in San Fer­nan­do last Sat­ur­day. San Fer­nan­do May­or, Mar­lene Coudray, and CNC 3's video jour­nal­ist, Ivan Toolsie, were giv­en hon­orary mem­ber­ship at the func­tion. De­liv­er­ing greet­ings, Ram­roop, a past Ro­tary pres­i­dent, said that over the past week, over 300 dis­as­ters had af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties world­wide. He ex­plained that Ro­tary In­ter­na­tion­al had been suc­cess­ful in deal­ing with var­i­ous is­sues, among them, po­lio.

"As we look at what is hap­pen­ing with the great­est im­pact of such dis­as­ters, I want to in­vite Ro­tar­i­ans to part­ner with us at the ODPM," Ram­roop said. He added that Ro­tar­i­ans could al­so part­ner with the ODPM's Com­mu­ni­ties Or­gan­ised and Ready pro­gramme to build the coun­try's re­silience to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He in­vit­ed mem­bers to be part of a meet­ing to dis­cuss the col­lapse of a fu­el tanker, which caused ex­ten­sive traf­fic con­ges­tion two weeks ago. Mean­while, out­go­ing pres­i­dent, Dev Go­sine, who hand­ed the pres­i­den­cy over to Aza­mud­din Khan, out­lined a range of out­reach pro­grammes that he had im­ple­ment­ed dur­ing his reign.

Among them were med­ical clin­ics at Erin in which 360 peo­ple ben­e­fit­ted, di­a­betes pro­gramme for Ro­tar­i­ans, Christ­mas brunch and toy dri­ve for 1,300 chil­dren, and a lit­er­a­cy project. Dis­trict Gov­er­nor Lara Quen­trall-Thomas un­der­scored the im­por­tance of ethics in lead­er­ship, while May­or Mar­lene Coudray al­so urged Ro­tar­i­ans to have col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gov­ern­ment. She stat­ed that Ro­tar­i­ans from San Fer­nan­do south had up­held the prin­ci­ples of self­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism. Al­so re­ceiv­ing awards were sev­er­al Ro­tary mem­bers in­clud­ing Choon Singh, Danielle Williams-Hinds, Robert Sanowar, Alec Sago­is, Can­dace Lal­la, Don­na Sama­roo, Swain David, Ter­rence Beepath, Aza­mud­din Khan and Ron­nie Bisses­sar.