Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has al­ready shipped ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$5 mil­lion in sup­plies to Ja­maica to as­sist the coun­try in its re­cov­ery fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion, the first ship­ment left Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 30, with an­oth­er sched­uled for to­mor­row.

“It was ac­tu­al­ly much more than that, be­cause there were oth­er do­na­tions as well that went on that ship,” said TTMA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Ramesh Ramdeen.

Ramdeen es­ti­mat­ed that the to­tal val­ue of this first tranche of sup­plies, which in­clud­ed sup­plies from oth­er donors, could be clos­er to US$10M to US$12M.

Ramdeen said the TTMA had been work­ing with the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team, to­geth­er with oth­er ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers, to mo­bilise sup­port for Ja­maica.

“I want to al­so men­tion that we have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of man­u­fac­tur­ers who have sub­sidiaries and goods in the Ja­maican mar­ket, and they are re­leas­ing from their in­ven­to­ries in­to the Ja­maican mar­ket. So, we have com­pa­nies like KC, Bermudez and as­so­ci­at­ed brands that have stock­piles of in­ven­to­ry, and they are re­leas­ing those goods free to their part­ners in the Ja­maican mar­ket.”

He not­ed that the ship­ping line Seaboard Ma­rine had been fa­cil­i­tat­ing trans­porta­tion by pro­vid­ing con­tain­ers and ship­ping ser­vices free of charge.

Goods will con­tin­ue to be ac­cept­ed to­day, as the fi­nal con­tain­er is be­ing packed at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion for trans­port to Ja­maica to­mor­row.

The pri­or­i­ty items in­clude canned food, bev­er­ages, clean­ing sup­plies and hard­ware goods, par­tic­u­lar­ly build­ing ma­te­ri­als.