DEM Says DEOs To Change

District Emergency Organisations were set up in Barbados, to fit into an international framework requiring communities to be the first response in case of emergency.

But according to Director of the Department of Emergency Management, Judy Thomas there is a perception that the DEOs have evolved into entities that run along constituencies lines and are seen as having political links... but the DEM head says that is about to change.

"I think that whatever emerges from this new assessment will be getting rid of that particular concept and putting it in a geographic setting that people are comfortable with."

According to her, the first step will be a consultation.

"We will establish a small technical working group, that will look at the strategizing for the way forward and out of that consultation we will put to the cabinet of Barbados a proposal for the establishment of a community preparedness vehicle which may not reflect what is in existence at this time."

Of the 30 DEOs that should be in existence, 26 are functioning at what has been described as a reasonable level. However the organisations in at least 4 St. Michael constituencies are said to be below satisfactory levels.

"Those are the ones in and around Saint Michael where we have great population, which are not functioning as such, because they don't even have chairpersons for those. There are others which have had recent changes of chairpersons and committees and so on, and I wouldn't want to use the word struggling, but they're not up and running as some of the others are running at this point in time."

Ms. Thomas says the question is not whether there will be a response, given the current state of the DEOs, but whether it will be appropriate, organised and systematic.

"A lot of people, when there is an emergency on, they come to offer their support the very day the thing is happening. You have so many people volunteering 'I want to do something, I want to do something.' The difficulty and the challenge John has is that people don't come forward when there's nothing happening and therefore that role of trying to achieve level of competency in the response is not there."

As such, Ms Thomas says the overhaul of the DEOs will see participation of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and the Youth Service among other groups.