BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada Thursday urged the international community to provide assistance at little or no cost at all as the Caribbean countries continue their rehabilitation efforts in the wake of a category four storm that left several people dead and millions of US dollars in damages.
Prime Ministers Dickon Mitchell (Left) and Dr. Ralph Gonsalves at the virtual news conference to launch a UN regional plan for their countries (CMC Photo)Hurricane Beryl, which barreled its way through the Caribbean on July 1, had become the earliest category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic this season. It struck Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a category 4 hurricane causing death, severe damage and destruction to homes and infrastructure, as well as massive loss of services and livelihoods.
Speaking at the launch of United Nations and its partners “Regional Response Plan for Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” both Prime Ministers Dickon Mitchell of Grenada and Dr. Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, acknowledged that their countries cannot afford to deal with another hurricane.
“We simply cannot afford another hurricane. Our islands are simply too vulnerable at this point. Even near heavy rainfall will cause major disruptions in terms of flooding, landslides and significant inconvenience to many of our citizens who are now homeless,’ Mitchell told regional and international media representatives at the virtual launch.
“We need significant capital investment for the cleanup and rebuilding of our communities. This is where the developmental conversation needs the input of our global family,” he said, adding that our ask….is that we need grant resources as our economies, our societies simply cannot afford more debt.
The UN plan, which seeks to address urgent needs of some 24,000 people in Grenada and 19,000 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is based on preliminary estimates and funding projections, which will be reassessed in the short term.
The authorities say the exact numbers remain a challenge, as assessments are ongoing amid damage to logistics, power and communications services, as well as power cuts.
The goal is to raise at least nine million US dollars, with five million going to Grenada and the remainder to St. Vincent and the Grenadines to assist approximately 43,000 people urgently needing humanitarian aid.
““The reality is that we need funds with a quick disbursement, period post hurricane” Mitchell said, adding that “in the ideal situation, and we make this call now, we should have had funding in place even before the event so that we could respond immediately”.
Mitchell said that the conversation on sustainable development calls for the creation of new facilities that will give small island developing states (SIDS) like those in the Caribbean on the forefront of the climate crisis, “the flexibility to have faster access to grant funds.
“In the normal scheme of things, disbursement periods, a best case scenario, is four to eight weeks. This is simply too long,” Mitchell said, adding that in case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada “we need the funds now.
“It is only 10 days since the passage of Hurricane Beryl and our needs and the needs of our citizens are immediate. We must secure our nations, we have to do so. In Grenada’s case we demonstrated fiscal resilience in legislation and enormous responsibility in ensuring that we set aside funds for rainy days and disastrous days such as the first of July…”
Mitchell said that was as a result of the National Transformation Fund, setting aside 10 per cent of the revenue collected under the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme through which Grenada provides citizenship to foreign investors in return for making a substantial investment in the socio-economic development of the country.
He said some utility companies are often times unable to get insurance coverage for external distribution and transmission systems. Mitchell said that the country has also maintained “sometimes at significant costs” parametric insurance policies through the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF).
“But the payout from all these funds is a drop to rebuild Carriacou and Petite Martinique and our northern parishes,” Mitchell said, adding that the cost of living on the front line of the climate crisis “is too high for us alone to pay or to bear the brunt of.
“Our people, our societies, our islands want to stay alive we deserve to stay alive and so we need your help and your assistance in making this happen,” Mitchell said.
For his part, Prime Minister Gonsalves, who told reporters that he concurred with every word spoken by his colleague, said that it would take millions of dollars to bring back the communities affected by the storm.
“We don’t have the material or the technical resources. To be sure, we are a resilient people, we have done a lot relying on our own efforts and we have faith and we have fresh hope and we are possessed of love.
“But we require the solidarity of our regional and international families. In the region, CARICOM (Caribbean Community) has been organising and advocating and we are working together in the Caribbean Community and our friends and allies globally have come to our aid .
“But the truth is this that the resources required are beyond what has been proffered so far. We are grateful for whatever assistance we have received thus far, but this relief effort would require substantial resources because people are going to have to be kept with income support and production support for a significant period of time, while we clean up and and while we seek to rebuild,” Gonsalves said.
He told reporters “I think we are seeing what can happen in just a few hours. Entire islands, small islands decimated and we have been talking about this”.
Gonsalves said that the situation played out in Dominica, Barbuda as well as other parts of the world and that “the major emitters” of climate change “are not listening as carefully as they should.
“If they have been listening they have not been summoning the requisite political will to address the existential question of climate change,” Gonsalves said.
