Melis­sa Doughty

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma yes­ter­day hand­ed over keys to five John Deere skid steer load­ers as part of the min­istry's ini­tia­tive in com­mu­ni­ty dis­as­ter-pre­pared­ness. The Gov­ern­ment spent $1,178,721.25 on the equip­ment and on five mul­ti-pur­pose portable shel­ters. A hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny was held yes­ter­day at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion's Trans­port Yard, Christo­pher Samuel Dri­ve, St James. The five load­ers were hand­ed over to the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties of Siparia, Pe­nal/Debe, Princes Town, Ch­agua­nas and Cou­va/Tabaquite. "There is a glob­al con­cern and chal­lenge on how com­mu­ni­ties and NGOs, etc, will treat with dis­as­ter. There is more and more dis­as­ter hap­pen­ing world­wide," the min­is­ter said. Shar­ma said mount­ing eco­log­i­cal prob­lems, brought about by cli­mate change, need­ed to be re­spond­ed to on both a na­tion­al and com­mu­nal lev­el.

The Gov­ern­ment had re­spond­ed, he added, by im­ple­ment­ing the dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit at each mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty of­fice. The equip­ment, he said, would be put to max­i­mum use. He thanked Col Dave Williams, chief dis­as­ter man­age­ment co-or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, who, he said, went be­yond the call of du­ty and who had en­sured that there was a re­sponse time of 20 min­utes or less. The Gov­ern­ment plans to spend $11 mil­lion over a three-year pe­ri­od to pro­vide equip­ment and train­ing for the dis­as­ter man­age­ment units at the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

The equip­ment to be pur­chased in­cludes a gul­ly suck­er, 15 skid steer load­ers, 15 portable shel­ters and 14 mi­ni-emer­gency re­sponse ve­hi­cles for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry. The min­is­ter al­so as­sured mem­bers of the me­dia that even though po­lit­i­cal wran­gling may be oc­cur­ring over the may­or­ship of San Fer­nan­do the op­er­a­tions of the cor­po­ra­tion would not be af­fect­ed. Af­ter the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny, work­ers at the cor­po­ra­tion com­plained to the min­is­ter about the trucks cur­rent­ly be­ing used. One em­ploy­ee said: "I beg­ging you please to ad­dress the is­sue. All the may­or talk­ing about is over­time." Shar­ma re­mained qui­et while he plead­ed.