Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor is call­ing for faster as­sis­tance for res­i­dents af­fect­ed by Tues­day’s se­vere weath­er, as re­ports of dam­age to homes in south­west­ern com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to in­crease.

Ten homes were ini­tial­ly re­port­ed dam­aged in dis­tricts un­der the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion fol­low­ing the freak storm. How­ev­er, Pa­lo Seco coun­cil­lor An­ton George said ad­di­tion­al re­ports have since been re­ceived from his elec­toral dis­trict, in­clud­ing one in­volv­ing a tree that fell on­to a house.

George said while no res­i­dents have been forced to leave their homes, the dam­age has sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ed their lives.

“No one has had to leave their homes, but their life has re­al­ly been dis­rupt­ed,” he said.

He said some af­fect­ed res­i­dents have al­so com­plained that the tar­pau­lins pro­vid­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit were in­suf­fi­cient, par­tic­u­lar­ly as in­clement weath­er con­tin­ued yes­ter­day.

George said there needs to be im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MPS­DFS) and the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to en­sure res­i­dents re­ceive time­ly as­sis­tance.

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit said on Tues­day that the min­istry was in con­tact with the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (MRDLG) re­gard­ing the dam­age.

“The MPS­DFS is in con­tact with the MRDLG. Teams are on it,” Mo­hit said.

How­ev­er, George said the re­sponse could be bet­ter co­or­di­nat­ed if the min­istry li­aised di­rect­ly with the cor­po­ra­tion.

“It's about help­ing the peo­ple at this point in time. We need a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion flow from those in au­thor­i­ty when in­ci­dents like these arise,” he said.

George said coun­cil­lors and the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit are of­ten among the first re­spon­ders when se­vere weath­er af­fects com­mu­ni­ties and should there­fore be kept in­formed of de­vel­op­ments in a time­ly man­ner.

He said this would al­low them to com­mu­ni­cate more ef­fec­tive­ly with res­i­dents and help co­or­di­nate as­sis­tance to those af­fect­ed.

George is urg­ing the rel­e­vant min­istries to strength­en com­mu­ni­ca­tion with lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies as as­sess­ments con­tin­ue and res­i­dents await fur­ther as­sis­tance.