By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A CABINET minister says the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is ready for hurricane season with $500,000 set aside.

Myles Laroda, Minister of State with responsibility for the Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA), said during the budget debate on Thursday that the agency has appropriate “preparedness and response plans” in place.

He also said: “There's an allocation of $1m in the 2022/2023 capital budget for hurricane precautions. And the sum of $500,000 is allocated in the recurrent budget for NEMA.”

He added: “There is an ongoing collaboration with other key stakeholders in government and private sector, regional and international organisations to ensure that all critical systems are in place and functioning. The impact of collective preparation efforts increase our capacity to quickly recover in the aftermath of a storm.”

After Hurricane Dorian in 2019, NEMA has been building capacity and, in collaboration with its partners, has done an assessment of each island in The Bahamas and their readiness for a natural disaster.

“NEMA is in the process of sharing the findings of the National Disaster Preparedness baseline assessment with disaster management practitioners and the wider community for use and has taken action to mitigate hazard impacts and for updating Disaster Preparedness and Response Plans,” Mr Laroda said.

NEMA has also acquired state of the art telecommunications equipment to get the message out before and after a hurricane and to allow it to conduct meetings virtually when necessary. In addition, the Disaster Management Committee was able to conduct training sessions with Family Island administrators and has been engaged with regional and international partners.

Mr Laroda added: “With grant support from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) the Organization of American States and Cable Bahamas, NEMA was able to procure equipment and conducted a series of community emergency response team (CERT) training sessions for persons in the tourism sector.”