Gail Alexan­der

She doffed her leather shoes last Fri­day, rolled up the trouser hems and donned thick socks and con­struc­tion boots to vis­it parts of St Lu­cia which were hard-hit by trop­i­cal storm Tomas re­cent­ly. And by yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's one-day tour of the storm-struck is­land was bear­ing fruit with re­in­forced pledges of as­sis­tance from T&T's busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to deal with St Lu­cia's $3 bil­lion re­con­struc­tion bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ef­forts to­wards St Lu­cia (and al­so St Vin­cent) have been made in the con­text of T&T's po­si­tion with­in the re­gion as head of the Cari­com com­mit­tee on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which en­com­pass­es dis­as­ter is­sues.

T&T al­so chairs Cari­com's en­er­gy com­mit­tee. St Lu­cian Prime Min­is­ter Stephen­son King, who host­ed the T&T del­e­ga­tion head­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­vealed the is­land's US$500m re­con­struc­tion bill be­fore show­ing the storm dam­age. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ac­com­pa­nied by pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers who yes­ter­day pledged re­newed sup­port. Along the tour on Fri­day through St Lu­cia's Cen­tral Range and north­ern ar­eas, the T&T team saw homes and ve­hi­cles still mired in thick mud left by high flood wa­ters which rav­aged many parts of the is­land.

Women re­late their woes

Six days af­ter the storm, bull­doz­ers were still out clear­ing deep silt and de­bris. Mat­tress­es and oth­er pos­ses­sions were piled out­side many homes, dry­ing in the sun. Is­land schools are still closed and while elec­tric­i­ty has been re­stored, wa­ter is a ma­jor prob­lem.

Food may al­so be as well, since King said 60 per cent of the is­land's crops were de­stroyed. Its eco­nom­ic main­stay–ba­nanas–was com­plete­ly wiped out. Bro­ken ba­nana trees lit­ter the is­land. In a few places, bunch­es of ba­nanas sur­vived since farm­ers wrapped them in blue bags to pro­tect them. Sev­er­al St Lu­cian res­i­dents waved to Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she passed through some places.

Mem­bers of a work crew clear­ing fall­en trees and pow­er lines high in the hills said they were hap­py to see the T&T PM. "We glad to see she....to see T&T," said one of the men. Walk­ing along the road to view land­slide dam­age, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was warm­ly greet­ed by a man on a pick-up loaded with oth­er peo­ple who said: "Wel­come to the T&T Prime Min­is­ter, greet­ings to all from T&T." In one area where homes are still awash with mud, Per­sad-Bisses­sar went off to speak with women who re­lat­ed their woes to her. She pre­sent­ed ham­pers from T&T.

Govt team do fol­low-up work

De­part­ing St Lu­cia on Fri­day evening and not­ing the huge re­con­struc­tion bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had in­di­cat­ed that T&T would see how it could help St Lu­cia work the sit­u­a­tion out. She has made it clear cash-strapped T&T can of­fer ma­te­ri­als, sup­plies and ex­per­tise and that was ac­cept­ed by St Lu­cia's King, who said he ap­pre­ci­at­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fer to give, out of her "house."

A Gov­ern­ment team got down to fol­low-up work on the is­sue im­me­di­ate­ly yes­ter­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said. "We've got­ten an as­sess­ment re­port. We know they need as pri­or­i­ty, wa­ter and build­ing sup­plies. WASA will pro­vide sup­port in one area and they ap­pear to have labour so there's no need to send CEPEP or URP work­ers to as­sist."

In tan­dem with that, pledges of as­sis­tance were al­so reaf­firmed by busi­ness­men who were on Fri­day's tour, in­clud­ing Fire One Fire­works CEO An­dre Abra­ham, whose com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed con­tain­ers to ship sup­plies to St Lu­cia. Abra­ham added: "The vis­it con­firmed that St Lu­cia def­i­nite­ly needs a lot of help." T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Greig Laugh­lin added: "The dam­age is par­tic­u­lar­ly ter­ri­ble in the is­land's south. We'll be giv­ing what­ev­er more we can in terms of prod­ucts and ser­vices. "Apart from what we've sent, they still need wa­ter and build­ing sup­plies so we'll be look­ing in that area. Fur­ther, sup­plies are be­ing sent up next week Sun­day via Coast Guard ves­sels." Su­per­mar­ket's As­so­ci­a­tion's Fer­oze Khan said: "They need a whole range of stuff. SATT can con­tribute food­stuff and per­son­al care prod­ucts, and we'll do an­oth­er dri­ve to mo­bilise more sup­plies to send fur­ther con­tain­ers with­in a month per­haps.

"We could al­so set up more col­lec­tion bins at stores for per­sons who want to pur­chase items to send to St Lu­cia. We al­so saw a lot of wa­ter dam­age so there's a need for cloth­ing and house­hold items peo­ple may have lost in the flood wa­ters. They may al­so need en­gi­neer­ing or labour to help clean up. We'll firm up our plans at a meet­ing on Wednes­day." NH In­ter­na­tion­al head Emile Elias, said: "We have a lot we can of­fer in terms of tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, some con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al and con­struc­tion ca­pac­i­ty. What I think we could fo­cus on is try­ing to help cre­ate new hous­ing set­tle­ments with roofs that won't fly off on hur­ri­canes. We have a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence in T&T with a first class hous­ing pro­gramme and we have the re­sources to of­fer."