Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

With the rainy sea­son al­ready trig­ger­ing flood events across the coun­try, the Gov­ern­ment is rac­ing against time to rev­o­lu­tionise its dis­as­ter re­sponse by in­tro­duc­ing faster dig­i­tal as­sess­ments, ramp­ing up man­pow­er, and mailing an ad­di­tion­al 90,000 sand­bags to safe­guard vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

In a high-lev­el work­ing ses­sion at Kent House, Mar­aval, yes­ter­day Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen met with dis­as­ter man­age­ment co­or­di­na­tors and field of­fi­cers from all 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to eval­u­ate re­cent flood re­spons­es, as­sess readi­ness, and iden­ti­fy op­er­a­tional needs, train­ing gaps, and lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges.

“I want­ed to hear di­rect­ly from our dis­as­ter units what worked, what didn’t, and what they need to be bet­ter,” Ameen said.

“This was not a pho­to-op. This was a work­ing ses­sion.”

The en­gage­ment was part of a broad­er ef­fort to mod­ernise and strength­en T&T’s dis­as­ter re­sponse in­fra­struc­ture, she said.

“One of my ob­jec­tives is to im­prove the num­ber of days it takes to do the as­sess­ments. We should not be tak­ing a whole week to re­spond, even when it’s re­al­ly bad,” Ameen said.

She said at the core of the Gov­ern­ment’s flood mit­i­ga­tion ef­forts is a mo­bile app used by dis­as­ter units to as­sess dam­age to homes, fur­ni­ture, and ap­pli­ances. This da­ta is then shared in re­al-time with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices. Joint train­ing be­tween both min­istries is set to be­gin in ear­ly Ju­ly to stan­dard­ise as­sess­ments and judge­ment cri­te­ria.

“You must be able to dis­cern be­tween dam­age to fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing, school­books, and the home it­self,” Ameen ex­plained.

“We want every­one across the coun­try to use a sim­i­lar lev­el of judg­ment so that vic­tims are as­sessed fair­ly and uni­form­ly.”

To boost man­pow­er, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are be­ing in­struct­ed to train ad­di­tion­al staff and vol­un­teers, in­clud­ing those from oth­er de­part­ments like road main­te­nance and pub­lic health, to as­sist in the as­sess­ment process.

“They’ve al­ready been trained to use the app and will now help ease the back­log,” Ameen said.

The min­istry is al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ing sand­bag dis­tri­b­u­tion, with an ad­di­tion­al 90,000 filled sand­bags be­ing made avail­able to the pub­lic apart from the usu­al sup­ply.

The min­is­ter re­mind­ed res­i­dents in flood-prone ar­eas not to wait un­til the wa­ter is at their doorstep.

“Pre­pared­ness is key. We’ve ad­ver­tised the lo­ca­tions where sand­bags are avail­able some re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions have as many as ten pick-up spots.”

With 268 new shel­ter man­agers re­cent­ly trained and 485 more ap­pli­cants ex­press­ing in­ter­est, the min­istry is in­creas­ing shel­ter ca­pac­i­ty and re­spon­sive­ness. It’s al­so ask­ing the pub­lic to play their part—es­pe­cial­ly in avoid­ing risky be­hav­iour dur­ing floods.

While ear­ly re­ports show im­prove­ments like re­duced wa­ter lev­els in tra­di­tion­al­ly flood-prone ar­eas like Rock Road in Pe­nal/Debe, Ameen said the min­istry is not let­ting its guard down.