With the Caribbean Region receiving US$9.5M from the United States of America (USA) to improve its Disaster Resilience, Guyana will be hoping to tap into those funds. This is according to the Head of the Civil Defence Commission, Lieutenant Colonel Kester Craig.
The funding was made possible through the U.S-Caribbean Resilience Partnership. The working group of the Partnership, which was launched on April 12 of this year in Miami, had its first meeting in Bridgetown, Barbados, on October 23-24. The meeting concluded with a US$9.5M Disaster Resilience Funding from the United States.
The Working Group comprises representatives from the United States, 18 Caribbean countries, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, the eastern Caribbean’s Regional Security System, universities, and other non-governmental partners.
The US State Department said the Group discussed plans to improve resilience through $5M in funding for a Caribbean-wide energy initiative – one benefit of which will be to reduce electricity outages resulting from the impacts of hurricanes and floods. $1.5M will support technical exchanges and consultations between U.S. inter-agency resilience experts, ministries, and disaster management officials from the Caribbean region within the partnership.
It said that $2M will support the capacity of Caribbean partners to prepare for and mitigate the effects of disasters. 1 million will be directed towards small grants for civil society and NGOs on enhancing community-led disaster resilience in the Eastern Caribbean.
Craig told the Guyana Standard that while funding would come with certain requirements, including which local entity should be the executing agency, advances will be made to access these funds.
Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Curacao, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago are the countries involved in the partnership.
