The Civil Defence Commission (CDC) has completed disaster training in all 10 regions of the country.
A release from the CDC said that 219 persons were trained in shelter management, 204 in damage assessment and needs analysis and 210 in emergency operations management.
The release from the CDC reported that the training started in July 2012 with eighty five persons from Region 3 and concluded fourteen months later (September 14, 2013) with the training of sixty nine persons from Region 5. The training team from the CDC consisted of Major Kester Craig, Captain Sean F Welcome, Captain Althea Daniels-Stuart, Carlton Semple, Owen Paul and Susan Lewis-Clarke.
The release said that apart from conducting the various workshops, the CDC also provided each Regional Democratic Council (RDC) with an emergency operation box. These boxes contain items such as copies of the map of the region; copies of the map of Guyana; various emergency data states/tables; stationery and office supplies etc, to be used to set up and operate the Regional Emergency Operations Centre (REOC) whenever the need arises.
According to the CDC, with the newly acquired knowledge, skills and resources, the participants are now better equipped to function in the three specialty areas thereby enhancing disaster risk management capabilities of their respective regions. It said that the RDCs are now better positioned/capable to establish the REOCs and the Regional Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Committees using persons from the pool trained by the CDC. The remainder of trained personnel can be used to establish the various sub-committees (EOC Management/DANA/Shelter Management) and response teams.
The release said that the CDC will further strengthen the DRM capacity at the community and regional levels by providing follow up DRM training on establishing Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT); Vulnerability Capacity Assessment (VCA), Geographic Information System (GIS) and Community Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM).
The countrywide training was initiated after consultation with the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and the Regional Executive Officers of the ten administrative regions in Guyana.
