Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

With just days to go be­fore the of­fi­cial start, Di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), Al­lan Stew­art, says prepa­ra­tions are un­der­way — but far from per­fect.

“Prepa­ra­tion, prepa­ra­tion. So, we are just mere days away from the At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son,” he said dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia. “We have start­ed our process to­wards plan­ning for this hur­ri­cane sea­son since Feb­ru­ary. Has it been per­fect? No, it has not.”

Stew­art ad­mit­ted that while TEMA be­gan work ear­ly, they are fac­ing ma­jor hur­dles — es­pe­cial­ly with fund­ing and slow pro­cure­ment sys­tems.

“I must point out that things are dif­fer­ent in the way cli­mate change has been af­fect­ing us. We are go­ing up against ad­di­tion­al chal­lenges where fund­ing and pro­cure­ment prac­tices are clash­ing in a par­tic­u­lar way.”

He said those fi­nan­cial con­straints have af­fect­ed their abil­i­ty to move quick­ly and pro­vide help to fam­i­lies in need.

“Even to as­sist homes that may have been im­pact­ed, it takes quite a lot, giv­en the cur­rent fi­nan­cial con­straints in the coun­try.”

Stew­art is now call­ing on To­bag­o­ni­ans to take more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“I think it is very fit­ting for me, as Di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, to ad­vise the gen­er­al pub­lic that more is ex­pect­ed of them in terms of how they man­age their prepa­ra­tion, be­cause things are not the way they used to be.”

Still, TEMA is press­ing for­ward. Stew­art con­firmed that to­day, TEMA will meet with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor to speed up prepa­ra­tions.

“We have a meet­ing — a very strate­gic meet­ing — with the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor to see how best they can as­sist us in mov­ing for­ward with a bit more alacrity and ef­fi­cien­cy in terms of how we pre­pare our­selves for this hur­ri­cane sea­son.”

Some com­mu­ni­ty work is al­ready un­der­way. Stew­art says ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems have been in­stalled in flood-prone ar­eas.

“We have been able to in­stall and pro­cure, through donors, ad­di­tion­al re­sources for ear­ly warn­ing — what is known as the Sea View Ef­fect, which is a com­mu­ni­ty flood ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem.”

Two more gauges are ex­pect­ed to be in­stalled in Rox­bor­ough and Scar­bor­ough, and at­ten­tion is be­ing paid to wa­ter­cours­es across the is­land.

While some “low-hang­ing fruit” like drain clean­ing has be­gun, Stew­art says the is­land is not yet ful­ly ready.

“We are al­most there. It’s just that things take a lit­tle bit of time. And in all hon­esty, there are some chal­lenges, but we are work­ing on those… we are hop­ing that by the time the hur­ri­cane sea­son gets go­ing, we’ll be in a state of readi­ness.”