Cabinet at its Tuesday, October 11, 2016, meeting has agreed to make its donation to Haiti in the form of cash, as opposed to goods and services.
Speaking with the media on Tuesday evening, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge noted that cabinet deliberated on the issue and took into consideration the constraints associated with getting items to the hard-hit areas of the country.
“When a country like Haiti is so badly devastated, the normal resources which we would provide them can pose a challenge. In other words, you take a ship and you fill it with rice and petroleum to say, and you send it off to Trinidad and you collect some more stuff from Trinidad and then you go and pick up some stuff in Jamaica and then you send it to Haiti, it lands in Port Au Prince and you hear that there is no way to get from Port Au Prince to other parts of the country or that it will take two months because the road has been destroyed” he explained.
So “we have decided to provide some cash in the first instance,” the Minister and First Vice President said.
Taking into consideration that the damage also left little to be sold or bought in the country, the Minister said it is government’s hope that the cash will be used to attain the resources from larger countries than Guyana which can provide helicopters to the desperate locations.
“We are not in a position to deliver into Haiti, in a hurry, at a point that they need so…if they are able to buy, they may transact with a commercial firm which can provide helicopters or they may get the US or one of the larger countries in the region to provide helicopters to move the stuff quickly” Greenidge said.
He, however, did not disclose the amount of money that will be given to the country noting that this will soon be revealed by the Minister of Finance.
Haiti was the most hard-hit country from Hurricane Matthew which killed almost 1000 persons and left parts of the country completely destroyed.
