UN Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Stephen O’Malley said he is happy with the results of a donor conference held at the UN earlier this week to assist hurricane-battered islands in the Caribbean.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria, both category-5 storms, hit the Caribbean in September causing a number of deaths and widespread devastation. Barbuda and Dominica were among the most severely affected, along with a number of other Caribbean islands and costs in damage are expected to surpass $5-billion.
“I think we’re extremely happy with the results of the conference,” O’Malley said in an interview with UN News.
In relation to Dominica, he said the island has a very long road to recovery.
“It is a very long road to recovery,” O’Malley said, noting that while the roads in the capital, Roseau, are more or less clear and water is back, only three percent of the country currently has electricity.
In addition, agriculture has been badly affected.
“It’s still a hard time,” he stated.
Nearly 400 high-level representatives from governments, multilateral and civil society organizations and the private sector gathered in New York, along with the Secretaries-General of the UN and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to help the affected countries “build back better.”
“They want to be a climate-resilient region,” O’Malley said, explaining that this involves practical steps from the way a country’s road network and electricity grid are designed to ensuring that schools and hospitals are built to withstand the impact of climate change.
“It’s your infrastructure. It’s also better planning and preparedness by the governments so that they can respond more quickly,” he pointed out. “They have the capacity to do that […] there’s a variety of different things there to make everybody more climate resilient.”
Donors pledged over US$2-billion at the conference which was attended by Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, and other regional leaders.
It’s more like 30’000 by now. And it’s not the looters and other crooks who left.
We are hearing that up to 20,000 Dominicans have left the country so far and that the passport office has run out of blank travel documents. Is that true or can government categorically deny this? I do know that a lot of Dominicans with U.K. roots have come back to England and that of course also means that no remittances are sent back home. I hope this is not the case because that would seriously hamper the re-building of our country.