CARICOM’s response to Hurricane Beryl

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By Neville J. Bissember

It is commendable that as Chairman of CARICOM, H.E. President Irfaan Ali was able to call an emergency meeting of his colleague Heads of Government within hours to strategise the Community’s response in the wake of the destruction visited upon the Caribbean by Hurricane Beryl last week, specifically in Grenada and its outlying island of Carriacou, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and with less intensity, Barbados and Jamaica. Praise be to the Almighty for the minimal but nevertheless unfortunate loss of life; Beryl’s toll will be measured more in terms of loss in the infrastructure, housing and agricultural sectors. This however is small comfort, as it will nevertheless register as a not insignificant setback to life, development and the accumulation of GDP in those island nations.

To quote His Excellency, ‘[T]he extent of destruction here will definitely require international support, not only immediate financial support in the form of grants and long-term low-interest concessional loans but also help in terms of restructuring existing loans’ There was also agreement among regional leaders ‘to reach out to all stakeholders to commence discussions on international support’.

Yet, I can hear the skeptics saying this is “too little too late” and that the integration movement is once again in reactive mode, rather than having acted with foresight and pre-planning for such a disaster. Indeed the skeptics on this occasion may be on to something as it is an indisputable fact that some things in life are inevitably predictable – old age, Christmas, your partner’s birthday and yes, the annual hurricane season. Let me leave the fortunes of West Indies (test) cricket out of this!

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