The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) continues to play an integral role in assisting the islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco which were devastated by Category 5 Hurricane Dorian earlier this month.
“At the moment, between the government of The Bahamas, the international military and/ or Caribbean military, we have over 1 000 boots on the ground, a quarter of which is from Caribbean troops.
“The Caribbean is divided into four sub-regions and Barbados plays the focal point for Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines . . . . If it is in the north-west, as in the case of The Bahamas, we begin pulling from Jamaica which is closest,” said Ronald Jackson, executive director of the agency.
“We must also recognise thatThe Bahamas is close to the US mainland and will also have a relationship with the US and would have benefitted from US resources. We signed an MOU recently with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Part of the MOU sees CDEMA benefitting from the Dutch military capabilities, so we requested their support and they have deployed a vessel with 700 military artisans which arrived on Wednesday to provide a good boost,” he said of the organisation which is made up of 18 governments.
Jackson noted while recognising their limitations as a region, they looked for other arrangements and activated other assets to provide support.
“At the moment, we have persons providing operations support [with] over 200 NGOs and US actors on the ground. We are also helping them coordinate the international community which allows them to focus a little bit on the decisions they have to make,” he said. (RA)
Subscribe now to our eNATION edition.
For the latest stories and breaking news updates download the Nationnews apps for iOS and Android.
