Honour your pledges, Comissiong

As Barbados prepares to disperse its first traunch of financial assistance to the Bahamas, CARICOM Ambassador David Comissiong is pleading for Barbadians who have pledged money in last Sunday’s telethon to honour their commitments.

In fact, Comissiong told Barbados TODAY that Government is currently over $150,000 short of the near $500,000 pledged last Sunday night at the Rise Bahamas mediathon.

After a ceremony at the Sea Breeze Beach House in Maxwell Christ Church to announce a $24,000 donation by Ocean Hotels Barbados, Comissiong said he was extremely pleased with the outpouring of support from Barbados’ working class and private sector.

He however stressed that citizens needed to follow through on promised donations to make the initiative work.

“We are now in the process of getting people to honor those pledges and collecting everything in the account at CIBC First Caribbean. As of Wednesday, we were up to approximately $278,000 so we still have some additional pledges to be honored and paid in,” he said.

“We will be doing our follow up work and we know there will be some lag but we want to get the first donation out next week with the understanding that more money will follow as it comes into the bank account.”

He added: “The funds will go directly to support on-the-ground relief efforts in the Bahamas. The figure we gave out at the end of the mediathon was 441,000. That represented a combination of cash payments at the CBC studios, credit card payments made on the Sunday, cheques made at the CBC studios and payments at various branches of the CIBC bank and pledges.”

Comissiong encouraged Barbadians to be proud of their efforts and encouraged citizens to find strength in the organs of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the
Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), which is the primary coordinator of the Bahamas relief efforts.

“The churches that immediately supported the fundraising efforts for the Bahamas, the companies like Cave Shepherd, Ocean Hotels and all the others that have been donating to this cause since last week, it shows that we are on the ball, we are being proactive and we are helping ourselves. We are not waiting for outside actors to come to our rescue. We are helping ourselves,” said the Ambassador.
kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb