MORE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

While the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) has been doing its part to train damage assessment officers (DAOs) who make themselves available, it has noted the need for additional volunteers to come forward to serve as DAOs and supervisors.

Director of the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS), Aubrey Browne, acknowledged this need as he spoke during the start of a two-day Damage Assessment Training and Simulation Workshop hosted by the BSS at the Baobab Tower in Warrens, St. Michael yesterday. The workshop represented the second training exercise facilitated by the BSS this year.

“Training is being provided for you as damage assessment officers, who will play a vital role after any national disaster in collecting and compiling the initial damage assessment statistics, which will be required to enable an effective response to the event,” Browne told those gathered yesterday.

“In order to collect information quickly after an event which affects the entire island, it will be necessary to have a large number of damage assessment officers to canvass the ground. We depend on volunteers from communities and various institutions such as yourselves to perform this role. Today, we have representatives from the public sector participating in this training session. It should be noted that we still need additional volunteers for DAOs and supervisors to cover some areas of the island, which currently have not been assigned to anyone,” he further stated.

Browne added, “There are pockets where we haven’t identified persons to cover those areas. Some areas would be like in the Scotland District area for example, some of the areas that are difficult to reach, where you don’t have many residential persons living. Because of the extent of the areas, we might need more than one person to cover those areas and we would need to identify back-up persons as well. If persons are impacted and cannot function [after a hazard event], you will need to look at other persons who can fill in, so we also have to consider the redundancies as well.”

Acknowledging that there is some support coming from District Emergency Organisations (DEOs), he however noted that some are still inactive and, as such, there is a need for more community leaders to emerge so they too can be trained to assist in any necessary damage assessment efforts.
(RSM)