We must work together to ensure recovery

First, a hearty welcome to returning Vincentians and visitors here for the Carnival Festival. Your presence and participation in our national cultural festival is greatly appreciated and it is a pity that there must be some inconvenience due to the hurricane and associated weather systems, but we all accept that such can be the vagaries of nature. Yet these provide us with an opportunity to graphically understand the nature of the climate change of which so much is heard about these days.

We at SEARCHLIGHT are saddened by the disastrous effects of the storm on our nation, and especially so the southern Grenadine islands where there also has been loss of life. We extend our condolences to the relatives of the deceased and declare our full solidarity to the residents of these islands in their hour of need. Once again, we have a major catastrophe on our hands for which recovery will only come through cooperation, trust and common efforts of all our people. We cannot expect others in the outside world to contribute towards our relief efforts if we ourselves are not pulling our weight.

As the Prime Minister outlined in one of his post-disaster reports to the nation, this is yet another major challenge to our developmental process just as we are recovering from other recent disasters.

Moreover, because the damage is not confined to any one location but strewn over several locations, primarily in the southern Grenadines, and also in St Vincent, it has brought out the difficulty of social and economic development in a multi-island state. Our neighbours in Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique, with whom we also express our solidarity, are in a similar position.

The petit size of the islands and their limited level of economic development themselves present additional challenges in dealing with the recovery and rehabilitation efforts. Transport, mainly over rough seas and involving personnel not resident in these islands, magnifies the size of the tasks before us,

Just imagine, in the height of the storm, having to transport the sick, aged and injured, given the geography of the area. It is not just a matter of finding appropriate heavy equipment and construction materials, we also must find accommodation for workers in a largely devastated area and make daily transportation arrangements. It will be ten times as difficult in the southern Grenadines as it was in the volcano-hit areas in the north of the mainland.

Additionally, the Prime Minister has raised environmental factors which must be built into the recovery and reconstruction exercise. We can no longer ignore these in any enterprise these days. They will be especially important given the very special ecology of these islands. For all these reasons, we need an even more herculean effort than in our past post-disaster efforts. We offer our compliments to our wizened and vastly experienced Prime Minister and his government for the prompt response so far. We extend thanks as well to the Governments and agencies in the region and beyond, who have responded promptly to our call for assistance. We call on the private sector here, including the wealthy foreign-owned enterprises in the Grenadines, to also throw their considerable weight behind the recovery effort.

Our vulnerability as Small Island States has again been exposed. We must link heads and arms across all divides, not just physical but political and social as well.

This is a great opportunity to put the southern Grenadines on a much stronger footing and to make the long neglected poorer folk of the islands truly feel that they are really a part of our united development thrust.