Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says T&T will pro­vide as­sis­tance to Haiti if re­quest­ed fol­low­ing pas­sage of the Cat­e­go­ry 4 Hur­ri­cane Matthew, which hit the Caribbean na­tion yes­ter­day.

Row­ley said so in re­sponse to ques­tions from re­porters af­ter yes­ter­day's launch of the PNM's 60th an­niver­sary Na­tion Build­ing Ca­lyp­so Com­pe­ti­tion at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

The fi­nals of the com­pe­ti­tion will take place at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on No­vem­ber 12 from 7 pm.

Asked to com­ment on the hur­ri­cane which had just start­ed to af­fect the coun­try, Row­ley re­spond­ed: "Oh, poor Haiti. Every time there is some­thing bad hap­pen­ing in the Caribbean Haiti has to get a piece of it."

Row­ley said the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in T&T would not ham­per its gen­eros­i­ty to a Caribbean na­tion in need.

"Haiti is a mem­ber of Cari­com. We are Caribbean peo­ple and if there is any­thing that we can do in the event that they need help, T&T will al­ways be pre­pared to share what we have with those who are in great­est need.

"Re­gard­less to what our (eco­nom­ic) cir­cum­stances are, we will al­ways have enough to share with our broth­ers and sis­ters who might be in greater need," he added.

Ja­maica was spared the worst of the hur­ri­cane and Row­ley said he spoke with that coun­try's Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness yes­ter­day. He did not elab­o­rate on the con­tents of the dis­cus­sion.

At the time of yes­ter­day's in­ter­view, Row­ley said he had not re­ceived any re­ports of the ef­fects of the hur­ri­cane in Haiti.

He said: "We have to wait and hope­ful­ly it is not (too bad) be­cause they haven't even re­cov­ered from the earth­quake (in 2010) yet and to be hit by what is one of the most pow­er­ful storms pass­ing through (was un­for­tu­nate).

"It is a big hur­ri­cane so I think it is a re­al threat."

In­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­port­ed at least sev­en deaths from the hur­ri­cane. Four died in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, one in Haiti, one in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and one in Colom­bia.

Row­ley al­so ad­vised na­tion­als to be more re­spon­si­ble in prepa­ra­tion for pos­si­ble nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He said the no­tion that "God is a Tri­ni" should not be used to pre­vent cit­i­zens from be­ing re­spon­si­ble dur­ing pe­ri­ods of nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.

In re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, Row­ley said while the State agen­cies will do all they could to en­sure they were ready if a hur­ri­cane was ap­proach­ing the coun­try there could nev­er be "per­fect prepa­ra­tion."

The Prime Min­is­ter said cit­i­zens should be mind­ful that "the time to pre­pare for a hur­ri­cane is not dur­ing the event but be­fore. Don't give up your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to any­body.

"God will take care of every­body but we can't just re­lin­quish that to a God head. He will take care of us but we too have to take care of our­selves in the process," he added.