National disaster in making

Such last-minute bulletins can cause the public to resort to rely on bulletins by non-authorised agencies, which could lead to conflicting reports and at times cause more harm than good.

What was unfortunate is that the previous administration left a gold mine to deal with natural and man-made disasters via the establishment of the National Operations Centre (NOC), which was a strong recommendation by the commission of inquiry into the attempted 1990 coup.

It stated that we need a centralised agency to ensure that all arms can coordinate in real time with each other and not work as independent bodies during natural or man-made disasters, as delay in passage of information, without a timely and appropriate response, can result in loss of property or life that could have been avoided.

Unfortunately, due to petty politics and lack of understanding, those in authority have now totally disregarded what was stated in this commission of inquiry, and watered down a critical element in national security into a sub unit of a spy agency.

One could recall the immediate State responses in Diego Martin when badly hit by floods a few years ago, because as soon as information was forwarded to the NOC it was relayed to the relevant arms in real time for a timely response.

However, due to ignorance in understanding how such a coordinating security Operations Command Centre works, it has now instead been shoved into a spying agency in the Strategic Services Agency, and we have returned to the backward system whereby one hand does not know what the other is doing.

The comical justification that the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) is in control shows how lost the administrators are, as the ODPM is not a coordinating agency and cannot coordinate or direct any other law enforcement or State agency.

The ODPM is supposed to be an arm of the NOC, whereby if there is a man-made or natural disaster, each arm of law enforcement, inclusive of army, police, coast guard, air guard, Fire Services, would have representatives.

Likewise, there would be a representative from ministries such as Local Government, Public Utilities, Works, Health, Transport, Communications, and representatives directly from the Radar Centre, Met Office, CCTV Command Centre, ODPM, TSTT , WASA, and TTE C.

They would be all under one roof, with their personal desks and accessibility to their heads and other representatives from their relevant agencies, all of which is provided for in the NOC, so there could be immediate sharing of information, collaboration, and receipt of any distress call and a timely joint response by different arms.

The ODPM cannot do this, which is why it was unable to absorb the number of calls being dispatched to it.

What made this worse is that the ODPM does not have the capacity to receive distress calls, and to give the public dozens of phone numbers was simply inappropriate.

All that was required was to inform the public that for any concern, just call 999, whereby the E999 was linked directly to the NOC, so depending on the nature of the call and the threat, it would be immediately relayed to the representatives in the NOC, be it a matter requiring immediate response, be it the Fire Services, Coast Guard, WASA, or local government.

But no. That was too straightforward, so instead what was done was to shut it all down and dismantle all of this, as well as other assets that were approved to assist in such incidents such as the UAVs, and hovercraft, solely because a previous administration established it.

Hopefully one day we would put national interest above politics.

GARY GRIFFITH via email