A woman who evacuated from the Southern Grenadines following the devastation caused by Hurricane Beryl on July 1 has complained that disaster managers have not called her for weeks about food as promised but called about a consultation with Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.
Monica Jordon made the complaint at the Methodist Church Hall in Kingstown on Wednesday as Gonsalves consulted residents of the Southern Grenadines who evacuated to St. Vincent after the cyclone.
“… it’s almost three weeks now I signed up for food. They say they calling. Up to this day, they can’t call. Today they can call and say come to the consultation. So what’s the difference?” Jordon told a packed Methodist Church Hall in Kingstown, where Gonsalves fielded questions.
On hearing this, Gonsalves, as he had done with two previous complaints, called on the Director of the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO), Michelle Forbes to explain.
“Michelle, you have to answer that again,” the prime minister said to laughter and cheers from the crowd.
“Michelle, you and Mobilisation have to answer. No. But clearly, clearly, Michelle … many persons have had good experiences with NEMO, there are others who have not had good experiences,” the prime minister said.
“And we must have, as near as possible, a good experience. I’m not talking about perfect, but a good experience. And we must address this,” Gonsalves said and noted that Minister of National Mobilisation, Senator Keisel Peters had stood to response
Peters was minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade before Gonsalves announced on July 16 that she would be relieved of those portfolios and assigned national mobilisation, social development, family, gender affairs and persons with disabilities.
Peters said there is a supplies subcommittee under the NEMO Act and when she was minister of foreign trade, the ministry recognised that there was “a shortage of certain commodities within the local market”.
The minister said her former team had convened a meeting with the supermarkets and stakeholders who usually supply NEMO with items for the food boxes.
“And we don’t want to give you a box that has this, but it doesn’t have that. We want to give you a complete box every time you come to collect the food packages.
“So, I was advised last week that the meeting was held. Supplies are now incoming. On my first day on the job, which was Monday, officially, I visited the centre at Campden Park, Prime Minister, and we now are in the process of packing the items and they should be ready, hopefully, before the end of this week.”
Responding to questions from Gonsalves, Peters said the food packages are intended to last for two weeks and contain enough food for the evacuees as well as the host families.
SVG is technologicalky poor. They are recording affected persons information on paper or some word document platform that operates in isolation.
We just came out of a volcanic eruption and are operating as if nothing was learnt. This points to the poor strategic management that takes place in the NEMO. The Grenadines are known for strong NGOs and yet the Government is using a person – person approach at managing this disaster. Person to person are time consuming, inefffective in strengthening long term capacities and only partially effective in countries with unlimited financial resources.
Well, well, well
Stewps… Any box with supplies is better than no box. 🙄 And no call…. Smh .. talking about it don’t have this and that so you didn’t want to send it so… Anything is better than nothing and it seems it’s nothing but excuses. You should send what you have available at the time of need and then you send what comes after, as it comes ..
Talk and more talk. No action