Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deeply root­ed cul­ture of dis­as­ter com­pla­cen­cy is now putting lives at risk, urg­ing cit­i­zens and state agen­cies to con­front a “new nor­mal” of un­pre­dictable cli­mate haz­ards threat­en­ing every com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing at a mul­ti-agency fo­rum host­ed yes­ter­day by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (TEMA) at the Hilton Trinidad, Ameen said the coun­try can no longer re­ly on the long-held be­lief that “God is a Tri­ni” as storms, floods and even rare tor­na­does be­come in­creas­ing­ly com­mon.

“Our peo­ple have be­come numb to dis­as­ters,” she told at­ten­dees, which in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Japan, the Unit­ed Na­tions, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Plan­ning. “Every rainy sea­son, they cook, lime and wait for the wa­ter to go down be­cause they ex­pect it. That cul­tur­al re­sponse is now a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and we must ad­dress it.”

Ameen said the re­cent un­usu­al tor­na­do in the up­scale West­moor­ings com­mu­ni­ty—which dam­aged 16 homes—shat­tered the mis­con­cep­tion that dis­as­ters on­ly af­fect rur­al or low-in­come ar­eas.

“That event re­mind­ed us that no one is im­mune,” she said. “These were well-built homes. You can­not blame the vic­tims. The cli­mate is chang­ing, and we must change with it.”

The min­is­ter al­so is­sued rare pub­lic crit­i­cism of the frag­ment­ed state of dis­as­ter re­sponse, not­ing that cit­i­zens do not care whether as­sis­tance comes from ODPM, lo­cal gov­ern­ment, TEMA or an in­ter­na­tion­al agency.

“To the pub­lic, every­body is ODPM,” she said. “When I was in op­po­si­tion, I ex­pe­ri­enced it my­self — min­istry sends you to ODPM, ODPM sends you back to lo­cal gov­ern­ment. Imag­ine what the or­di­nary cit­i­zen goes through.”

She urged se­nior of­fi­cials to “pick up the phone and get it done,” in­stead of pass­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­tween agen­cies dur­ing emer­gen­cies.

Ameen not­ed that more than 200 new CERT vol­un­teers grad­u­at­ed last week, adding to the Gov­ern­ment’s push to build ca­pac­i­ty in every re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our dis­as­ter units, our vol­un­teers, our shel­ter man­agers — they are the boots on the ground,” she said. “And I am boots on the ground. This Gov­ern­ment is boots on the ground.”

She added that the emo­tion­al toll of re­cur­ring floods and storms is of­ten over­looked.

“Many peo­ple don’t die in dis­as­ters, but they car­ry trau­ma,” she said. “I have con­stituents who can­not sleep once the sky turns grey. Pre­pared­ness al­so means psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sur­ance.”

Ameen reaf­firmed her min­istry’s com­mit­ment to build­ing a safer, more re­silient coun­try through col­lab­o­ra­tion, sci­ence, com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships and cul­tur­al­ly aware plan­ning.

“We are build­ing sys­tems, but more im­por­tant­ly we are build­ing trust,” she said. “To­geth­er, what we do will save lives — and re­duce trau­ma — as we face the chang­ing cli­mate.”