More than $22 million approved for ashfall cleanup

More than $22 million has been approved to cover the cost of the clean-up of the ashfall from the explosive eruptions at La Soufrière volcano in neighbouring St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including paying the hundreds of workers who cleared the streets of an equivalent of 40 000 bags of ash.

And while Barbados continues to count the cost of the damage from Hurricane Elsa which hit the island last Friday, those same workers have stepped up to help in the post-hurricane clean-up effort.

The sum approved for the ashfall clean-up was the largest portion of a $34.8 million supplementary to the 2021-2022 Estimates of Expenditure that went before the House of Assembly on Tuesday.

Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn, who introduced the resolution to grant $34 893 875 from the Consolidated Fund to supplement the Estimates, said $22 153 875 of that amount was to reimburse ministries, departments and state-owned enterprises that participated in the clean-up that was required when ash was dumped on Barbados during the explosive eruptions in April.

“They used existing funds from their existing budgets to be able to do the clean-up with the understanding that the Ministry of Finance would reimburse…. This is not ordinarily done, but the fact of the matter is the Government was faced with an emergency [and] had to respond,” Straughn explained during the brief Parliamentary sitting.

In the same way, he said, Government has been called upon to respond to the significant damage caused by Hurricane Elsa.

Several homes were either damaged or destroyed, roofs blown off and electricity poles and power lines downed by the Category 1 hurricane’s high winds.

“We’re still in the process of compiling the estimates as it relates to the cost of responding to that, and certainly the Ministry of Finance will be working with the rest of the Government, including the Ministry of Housing [and the Ministry of] Transport and Works, to continue to ensure that the proper response for the rehabilitation – whether of structures as well as some of the infrastructure – can be accommodated in the shortest possible time,” Minister Straughn said.

“It would be remiss of me not to remind the country that whether it is the intensity of storms which we clearly have just come through a weekend from, that climate change and these events will continue to impact the country. There is a cost of the recovery from each of these events and even in a COVID environment, the Government has to continue to ensure that the country can function and, therefore, what is required to be able to ensure that we can bring back some level of normality we will allocate the appropriate resources to so do.”

Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources Ian Gooding-Edghill thanked the workers who assisted in the ashfall clean-up as well as the private contractors who were mobilized at short notice to clear roadways, culverts, drains and wells.

“They came to the rescue of Barbadians at a time when Barbados needed much assistance in the clean-up exercise across the island,” he said, noting that some of the $13.3 million which his Ministry is being given will go towards paying those individuals and companies.

“This must also be a model, perhaps one of several, that we need to adopt in the country. And what it says to us is that whenever you’re faced with an emergency, whenever you’re faced with an unplanned event, that we have a core of workers in Barbados who can be mobilized at short notice, along with the assistance of private contractors, to clean up Barbados and to restore it to what it is and what it ought to be.”

The Minister noted that on the heels of the destructive hurricane, “again the workers have been pressed into action to help clean up Barbados and to free Barbados of all the debris that attended to the country as a consequence of Hurricane Elsa”.

Gooding-Edghill reported that during the ashfall clean-up effort, 40 000 bags of ash were moved by his Ministry alone, although he noted that the Ministry of the Environment and National Beautification had also removed truckloads of ash.

The $34.8 million supplementary also included $1 million to cover the Government’s donation to St Vincent and the Grenadines, following the eruptions at La Soufrière volcano; $10 million to continue support for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic under Government’s Adopt-our-Families Programme; and $1.74 million to provide financial relief to Barbadian employees who were employed at regional airline LIAT. (DP)