– container to leave on Tuesday

The residents of disaster-struck Haiti will soon benefit from more donations from Guyana and Suriname.

An initiative from the Caricom Secretariat has seen arrangements being put in place to have a 20 ft container with relief supplies – consisting of foodstuff, clothing, school supplies, water, toiletries and other household items being sent to Haiti. Haiti has recently been hammered by tropical storms Fay and Hanna and hurricanes Gustav and Ike, all of which affected the island in the space of a month.

Yesterday, a symbolic handing over was done at the Caricom Secretariat where Deputy Secretary-General of Caricom, Ambassador Lolita Applewaithe was on hand to receive the donations from members of various organisations.

These included Suri-name’s Ambassador to Caricom Manorma Soeknandan, who made a donation on behalf the Caricom Youth Ambassadors of Suriname; Roy Darson of Metro Office and Computer Supplies; Judy Joseph from the Central Rotary Club of Georgetown and Adalia Hooper of Rotaract.

Last week the Rotaract Club of Guyana had donated US$5,000 to assist Haiti.

The most recent donations from the Rotaract Cub included contributions of mattresses from Kissoon’s Furniture Store, detergents from Sterling Products and clothing from its members.
Applewaithe also received the container from Peter Peroune, the marketing representative of Seaboard Marine.

The company will be shipping the container free of cost through its local agent John Fernandes Company Limited. The container is expected to be shipped on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, this newspaper was informed that several other Caricom member states have contributed to the relief efforts of Haiti, these include Jamaica and Bahamas (who were also affected by hurricanes), St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Leonard Robertson, the Secretariat’s Advisor of Public Information expressed appreciation to the various donors on behalf of Caricom Secretariat.

According to him, Secretary-General Edwin Carrington recently travelled to Haiti and has communicated to the Secretariat on the situation there.

According to reports, the floodwaters are only now beginning to recede. Due to this fact, access to several areas has been severely hampered.

When asked if the Secretariat was organising further initiatives to assist Haiti, Robertson said Caricom was open to any further requests that the government of Haiti might have.