SDC LEADING THE CHARGE IN RE-IMAGINING EMERGENCY SHELTERS
During a visit to Falmouth Trelawny, on Thursday (January 15), Minister of Local Government and Community Development, who is also the Deputy Chairman of the Disaster Risk Management Committee, Hon. Desmond McKenzie announced that the Social Development Commission (SDC) has been spearheading surveys of the existing community centres across the island that can be retrofitted and used as emergency shelters in preparation for the upcoming 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season.
He emphasized the necessity of reassessing emergency shelters given that many of them were compromised during the passage of the category five hurricane.
“A lot of the shelters have been compromised because of Melissa, and in another four months, we will be launching the hurricane season… we will now have to be looking seriously at some of our shelters, the SDC would have completed a survey island wide of community centres and we are going to be looking at community centres that can be converted, that we can remodel to turn those into shelters”, Minister McKenzie said.
“We have to change a lot of what was in place previously as it relates to the shelters… we cannot go forward using the same sort of system that we have been using” he disclosed.
He also added that other facilities under the purview of the local government ministry, such as markets and cemeteries, have been adversely affected by the hurricane, and those infrastructures will also be assessed.
Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Social Development Commission, Omar Frith, while speaking to staff of the Trelawny Infirmary during a social intervention session, revealed that the agency has received more than 100 applications from church groups looking to benefit from the $75 million grant allocation made available by the government to assist churches in their recovery efforts.
“We have received 176 applications to date…our next step really is to do the verification, that is a part of the important step for us. Not a technical verification on our own, we know that the major work is going to be clean up, for those minor repairs that will help, we have the support of the municipal corporations the various parishes, just to help us verify that the damage that they report and the costings for the damage they are seeking assistance, minor damages, those are verified” he said.
The SDC has been instrumental in the data collection and damage assessment process since the passage of the hurricane Melissa last October.