Members of the team from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), which will be conducting Guyana’s “Detailed Disaster Sector Assessment” (DDSA) on the current floods situation, arrived in Guyana on Tuesday.
The mission will be coordinating with the Civil Defence Commission (CDC) in the execution of the assessment, which is estimated to be completed in approximately one month.
The team includes representatives from a number of international agencies including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
A number of Caribbean regional agencies are also represented on the team, including the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and Caribbean Agricultural Research & Development Institute (CARDI).
At a team briefing on Tuesday evening, Executive Director of CDEMA, Elizabeth Riley, commended the quick response from the different agencies which allowed for the team to be constituted in a short time.
“This is a true representation of the spirit and practice of our regional response mechanism,” Riley commented.
Riley also commended the work that the CDC has been doing thus far in addressing the flooding, which has been ongoing since last month due to unusually heavy rainfall.
Guyana reached out to the CDEMA for assistance following the declaration of the flooding situation as a national disaster on June 9. The DDSA is the fourth stage in the CDEMA Damage Analysis and Needs Assessment (DANA) continuum for disasters.
At Tuesday’s briefing, CDC Director General, Kester Craig highlighted the importance of the DDSA report to guide, short, medium and long term intervention.
“It is very important for us to understand what is happening in each administrative region but we cannot get this done without collaboration and coordination, so we are very grateful for the support from the regional and international organisations,” Craig noted.
The DDSA team is scheduled to commence work from Wednesday, where they will be covering assessments and analysis across seven sectors, namely health, water and sanitation, infrastructure and housing, agriculture, social services, shelter and mining.
The DDSA will see respective teams going into Guyana’s most affected regions, which are Regions Two, Five, Six, Seven and Ten. The teams will spend a number of days in each region meeting with necessary stakeholders and gathering data for analysis. Each respective team will include specialists for each of the sectors being assessed.
The assessment will include analysis of the sectors to determine the extent of the damage that has occurred, an analysis of the estimated cost to recover, and look at how the recovery estimate can lead to additional support for Guyana in the rebuilding and long term recovery.
