Needed: disaster relief fund
Published:Thursday | September 30, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
Menacing Tropical Depression 16 has been seriously affecting our country, wickedly taking lives and seriously damaging property and the country's infrastructure. Although we are located within the hurricane belt, we can never be fully prepared to deal with the challenges posed by such systems.
While we naturally continue to focus on saving lives and protecting property during the passing of this tropical depression, once this system has successfully passed our attention will have to shift to relief and reconstruction.
Given the country's continued budgetary constraints, even if money had been set aside in this year's Budget to deal with such efforts, it would more than likely be largely insufficient. Consideration must therefore be given to other means of allowing us to better deal with such challenges whenever they arise.
Online donations
A check of the website of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), the official government agency so charged, as the name suggests, reveals that there is no capability of online donations to assist in its relief efforts.
Even if ODPEM, as a government entity, does not accept online donations, a similar observation can be made of the Jamaica Red Cross, a non-governmental agency that deals with emergency relief efforts. None of the websites of similar agencies, such as the the Adventist Disaster Relief in Jamaica, was found to make such provisions either.
During the immediate aftermath of the Portland market truck tragedy, I made a suggestion to the commercial bank managing the fund that was established to assist the survivors of the accident.
I suggested that, in such a situation, a deal could be struck with money transfer agencies like Western Union to have the transfer fees waived for all donations made to the fund. I was told the idea would be looked into, but I have had no reason to believe it was ever implemented, if actually even considered.
Perhaps, given our vulnerability to hurricane systems and other natural disasters, we could move to establish a national disaster relief fund, to be managed outside of the direct remit of the Government, so as not to discourage some from participating out of fear of the Government mismanaging the funds.
I am, etc.,
KEVIN K.O. SANGSTER