As part of its contingency plan to strengthen the preparedness and response mechanism of the education sector in Dominica, the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development in collaboration with IsraAID, UNICEF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is hosting a two-day workshop for education officers and stakeholders.
The workshop which is being held on the 11th and 14th of June is ongoing at the Prevo Cinemall in Roseau.
“Today you are there because we are going to work on developing a contingency plan for the Ministry of Education,” Education Programme Manager and Disaster Risk Reduction Specialist- IsraAID, Sawana Fabien said. “As part of today’s activity we are going to basically understand the process of contingency planning.”
However, Fabien said that is part of a much larger initiative which is basically to develop the education and emergency strategy of the Minister of Education.
“After hurricane Maria we had a few serious challenges and we don’t want to ever have to go through some of these challenges again,” she stated.
Fabien continued, “We understand some of the gaps that existed, we understand some of our shortcomings and basically the contingency plan is a process that takes us into understanding what our capacities are, understanding what the opportunities, also understanding some of the advantages we have among ourselves that will make us better able to respond and prepare for emergencies in the future.”
She revealed that the Ministry of Education and the UNDP, UNICEF and IsraAid are seeking to engage a consultant who will basically put all the pieces together.
“This has started,” Fabien noted. “We are actually going ahead of the consultant and we are meeting among ourselves to discuss the process, discuss how we want our contingency plan to look like.”
She hopes that by the end of the workshop the discussions and sessions would assist participants in that process.
Will it be followed by a workshop and consultation about contingency planning for no contingency plan ?
Here we go, another workshop where people can pay lip service but achieve absolutely nothing. That’s how things are done in DA. This nonsense starts right at the top of the pyramid as long as it doesn’t interfere with Skerrits dictatorial tendencies. After all, he ‘runs’ things in DA.