US provides training and equipment to strengthen TEMA disaster warehouses

The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing train­ing and equip­ment to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency to im­prove the man­age­ment of its dis­as­ter re­lief ware­hous­es.

The sup­port is be­ing de­liv­ered through the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port of Spain and Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand and is aimed at strength­en­ing TEMA’s abil­i­ty to man­age its Dis­as­ter Re­lief Ware­hous­es.

The ini­tia­tive builds on an ear­li­er project in which a dis­as­ter re­lief ware­house was con­struct­ed for TEMA in 2016 through the Hu­man­i­tar­i­an As­sis­tance Pro­gramme of US South­ern Com­mand.

Val­ued at US$265,000, the pro­gramme will be car­ried out in two phas­es and fo­cus­es on im­prov­ing ware­house man­age­ment and dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness.

The first phase be­gan on March 9 with a five-day train­ing ses­sion at TEMA’s Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre in To­ba­go. Fif­teen TEMA per­son­nel are be­ing trained to im­ple­ment ware­house in­ven­to­ry con­trol soft­ware de­signed to im­prove the track­ing and man­age­ment of dis­as­ter sup­plies.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the train­ing is in­tend­ed to equip staff with the skills need­ed to op­er­ate the sys­tem and main­tain it over the long term.

The sec­ond phase will in­volve the de­liv­ery and in­stal­la­tion of ware­house equip­ment lat­er this year.

The ini­tia­tive in­cludes both the pro­vi­sion of equip­ment and hands-on train­ing in­tend­ed to im­prove the stor­age and man­age­ment of emer­gency re­lief sup­plies used dur­ing dis­as­ters.

Deputy Chief of Mis­sion at the US Em­bassy, Char­lie J. Fran­ta III, spoke at the open­ing of the train­ing ses­sion and ref­er­enced the on­go­ing part­ner­ship be­tween the two coun­tries in ar­eas in­clud­ing dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.

The pro­gramme forms part of on­go­ing co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States on emer­gency man­age­ment and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance ini­tia­tives