CATEGORY:DISASTER PREPARATION ---------------------------------- INSIDE GRENADA Friday March 09,2007 by Rawle Titus GRENADA: A top Disaster Management official in the Caribbean is worried that the absence of a major system last hurricane season may have caused Grenadians to start letting their guard down once more. Head of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency CDERA, Jeremy Collymore, says he has sensed what he called an undue relaxation among the local population. Collymore is issuing a wake-up call to Grenadians, roughly three months before the start of the new hurricane season and following two major hurricanes, which claimed lives and caused widespread destruction. “We must guard against the reemergence of complacency in our individual, collective and national preparedness”he said. “There is a tendency and a fear I have, that the absence of a major event last year is creating an undue relaxation among our people. We must not be stressed out, we must take measures and steps to prepare ourselves and our communities, for any eventuality which may surface”. Collymore was in Grenada last week, meeting with the executive of the National Emergency Advisory Council (NEAC) and assessing this country’s state of preparedness. He has pledged CDERA’s continued support particularly for a review of Grenada’s Disaster Management programme. “I think there was an agreement among those present, to maintain the energy and consolidate the focus of rebuilding the capacity post Ivan, there is a clear recognition on the need to revisit the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme and identify where we are in implementing that programme and what gaps are there that can be identified and straightened out”the CDERA Coordinator stated. “This should be structured within a results based management programme in keeping with the new dispensation agreed to at our meeting in Barbados last year. The issue of strengthening the Human Resource capacity of NaDMA to provide the leadership for this newly reengineered programme was also raised and we noted that there was an ongoing effort to fill some positions”. The CDERA Coordinator is suggesting a wide ranging national consultation on Disaster Management with the ultimate aim of securing greater stakeholder involvement.