T&TEC work­ers will be head­ing to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to as­sist with restora­tion ef­forts fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said a con­tin­gent of work­ers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion will go to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to help with in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs tak­ing place there. He was speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing a waste man­age­ment pol­i­cy frame­work launch at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. On Ju­ly 1, Hur­ri­cane Beryl af­fect­ed sev­er­al is­lands in the re­gion as it made its way up the arch­i­pel­ago, in­clud­ing Grena­da.

A UNICEF East­ern Caribbean area of­fice Hur­ri­cane Beryl sit­u­a­tion re­port dat­ed Ju­ly 24, not­ed that St Vin­cent and the Grenadines is­lands in­clud­ing Be­quia and Union Is­land suf­fered con­sid­er­able de­struc­tion. It said af­ter the hur­ri­cane, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700 peo­ple had been evac­u­at­ed from the lat­ter. Some 98 per cent of the build­ings on Union Is­land, in­clud­ing the air­port, were dam­aged, many of them ex­ten­sive­ly. Some 1,369 peo­ple in to­tal had to be re­lo­cat­ed to 45 of­fi­cial shel­ters and more than 29 in­for­mal shel­ters.

The hur­ri­cane al­so saw St Vin­cent with­out elec­tric­i­ty for days. Gon­za­les said T&T has al­ready as­sist­ed its Cari­com neigh­bours im­pact­ed by the hur­ri­cane, will be play­ing a fur­ther role. “A team of T&TEC men and women will be de­part­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to help in their restora­tive ef­forts af­ter the hur­ri­cane that rav­aged the re­gion and cost so much lives,” he said. Up to one week ago sec­tions of Canouan and Mayreau re­mained with­out pow­er. There is now an ex­ten­sive ef­fort to clean and re­build.

There were five deaths record­ed in St Vin­cent due to Hur­ri­cane Beryl.