La Soufriere recovery would cost $1.1 billion to St Vincent
Ralph Gonsalves said it would take about 40 to 50% GDP in the recovery of volcano crisis in the country, which is accounted as EC $1.1 billion (Total GDP is EC $2.2 billion).
Tuesday, 27th April 2021
“We have to provide 21,000 meals each day, 7,000 each for breakfast, lunch and dinner”
Fear of COVID19 outbreak
Divulging details, PM said that they have been providing about 6,000 packages once a week for people who are in homes and also those who are in the orange zone and there are about 250 homes. “The real challenges for us is COVID19, as we have large groups of people coming together in shelters. There is an enhanced risk of an outbreak as so many people are living together in the same place, and there won’t be any physical distancing.”
The big danger now is on the north-eastern side river valley as some rain has started to come and there would be mud-ash flows which are going have landslides in the area, “Because over 100 million cubic meters of material came out from volcano, not all of that landed in St Vincent. With the height and airflow, it went to Barbados, St Lucia, Grenada.”
Global Appeal Fund
Under the leadership of PM Ralph Gonsalves, United Nations launched a Global Appeal Fund to raise the US $29.2 million in response to La Soufrière volcano. “That is not even close to what we require in response to the crisis.” PM Gonsalves said that the UN and its subsidiary organisations are providing this money so that people could get necessary items or tools to clear the ash fall.
To do the humanitarian work in St Vincent, would require about EC $15 million every month. That just includes social and humanitarian support to the people. Besides, there would be an additional need of millions of dollars for housing, animal husbandry, agriculture and other major recovery projects. United Nations has asked some of the amounts, but it won’t be enough for St Vincent to get back on its feet.
“At the moment, we made two major decisions, first decision was made three years ago to establish a contingency fund. We put 1% on top of the VAT as a disaster levy. And, there was $3 a night on rooms called resilient levy for visitors. Till last year, we have raised to $50 million with the contingency fund and spend about $10 million in response to COVID19, so we have about $40 million for our humanitarian effort,” added St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister.
While replying to the question about how long this volcanic activity could last, Comrade said nobody knows, but in speaking terms, we have been informed that it might last for about 4 months.
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