Georgetown: President David Granger says his country’s vast land mass can serve as “a gift” to all people from several Caribbean nations to relocate and rebuild their lives in the aftermath of devastating hurricanes Irma and Maria.
CARICOM member state Dominica was on Tuesday left completely knocked out by Category 5 Hurricane Maria which caused significant damage to that country’s physical infrastructure, its tourism-based economy and even its communication capabilities. Eight people were confirmed dead with search and rescue officials still to reach areas cut off completely as roads were washed away or blocked with debris.
Speaking with the Guyanese media corp. in New York prior to pitching to the United Nations General Assembly, the need for the international community to put measures in place to protect the environment now reacting to man’s exploitation, Granger said Guyana is the largest CARICOM state which has to to consider its land space “as being the hinterland of the Caribbean.”
Guyana’s land mass is 215,000 square kilometres with a population of just over 750,000. “We have to sit down and speak to other Caricom states to see how this gift could be utilised to give the Caribbean people a better life in the wake of these disasters.” In his lifetime, the 72-year-old Granger said, “I have never seen such a catastrophic series of hurricanes one after the other.”
Noting Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit who reported that winds blew away the roof of almost every building owned by people whom he had spoken to, made it clear climate change was not something to be ignored, particularly for small island states of the Caribbean.
“We’ve got to think of evacuation, where these people will go to,” Granger said. They cannot be moved from one affected island to another affected island and that it was largely it is a humanitarian situation. A man was reported killed in Guadeloupe and several islands were left inundated by floods caused by Maria’s outer bands. Though reports of the devastation were scarce yesterday, to contain the situation in Dominica, a state of emergency was declared and a curfew from 4 pm to 6 am, imposed.
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