The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE recently tabled Disaster Risk Management Bill will merge government entities that deal with risk management and remove overlap in functions, Myles Laroda said yesterday.

Mr Laroda, minister of state with responsibility for the Disaster Reconstruction Authority, described the importance of the bill at the Office of the Prime Minister’s press briefing yesterday.

“We are going to take the role of risk management in the country very seriously,” he said.

Mr Laroda mentioned the overlapping institutions.

“What we also noticed in the past was that you had NEMA, you had DRA. So you had overlapping institutions. You had people basically doing the same things and agencies not really talking to each other. And that’s not on the personal level - it’s just there were too many silos. The new agency will be an agency that will be much more agile, they’ll be much more adaptive.”

He explained another rationale for going this route is that there is a lot of funding out there for small island developing states like The Bahamas to access.

“And in order to access those funds, you have to have a legislative regime in place. And so another reason we are doing this is to be able to source funding from other NGOs or other countries and to be able to take monies from these institutions you have to have an institutional and a legislative regime that is in compliance with the other countries of the world and how they tackle disaster risk management, resilience, recovery,” the minister stated.

Asked what sort of projects can be rolled out once funding is secured, he mentioned some islands that have inadequate hurricane shelters.

He said there was at least one island that was identified that did not have a shelter that meets the standards.

He added: “So we have had this year we got UNDP, I think the Indian government donated a million dollars towards the construction of the centre in Abaco. What we’re looking at and part of the reason we are doing this now is that to qualify for the IDB loan, we have to have the regime in place before the end of the year. And so there’s a time constraint, but apart from the construction of assistance in the construction of facilities, you also talking about equipment.”

“I think we had a summit a few weeks ago of which representatives from the PDC (Pacific Disaster Centre) actually showed images of what this country would look like if (a) sea surge rise continued by 2050 and for those of you who are from the island of Andros it’s not a pretty sight. And so apart from structures, there’s also going to be training we are working towards having Bahamians, who have an interest in meteorology or in disaster risk management and prevention that we are building a career path for these individuals.”