If it’s true that what gets measured gets done — and we believe it to be so — Mr Daryl Vaz was right to make an unannounced visit to the Portland Parish Council yesterday to examine the pace of preparations for Hurricane Matthew.

Mr Vaz, who is the minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, and more importantly, the member of parliament for Portland Western, one of the designated Matthew hot spots, was not pleased when he found that no member of the parish emergency committee was present.

This was at a time when all the weather predictions were saying that Matthew was bound to hit Jamaica, save for a miracle, with pounding winds and rains within 36 to 48 hours.

It is true that Jamaica has been more prepared for hurricanes since category 4 Gilbert slammed the island on September 12, 1988. Recovery after each hurricane has been spectacular, notably the return of electricity, water and phone services.

Still, no country can ever be too prepared for these natural disasters, which are getting worse with the problem of adverse climate change. One area in which we are always woefully unprepared for hurricanes is drain and gully cleaning. The moment a disaster threatens, MPs and councillors get into a mad, last-minute rush to remove the pile-up of months of garbage. One would think that, given the relative frequency of hurricanes, or the threat of them, drain and gully cleaning would become second nature.

The people being paid to see that gullies and drains are cleaned regularly and not pose a danger to the public in times of flooding, need to have their boss pay them unannounced visits akin to what Mr Vaz did yesterday in Portland.

“I came here this morning to meet with the chairman and secretary/manager to get an update as to what is happening, but they are not here. The acting disaster manager tenure is up yesterday and I had expected they would have extended it due to the situation presently, and I hope I will get an update on the matter,” the obviously upset Mr Vaz said.

He had every right to be. It is conceivable that the chairman and secretary, manager of the council had pressing business elsewhere, but someone should be on hand to see that the preparations were being supervised. Very few things could be more important at that point in time.

Mr Vaz was trying to be proactive, noting that Portland was one of the most vulnerable parishes to disasters and he did not want a situation where supplies could not reach the parish after the disaster, so he arranged for containers of emergency supplies to be on hand before the hurricane hit.

That’s the kind of example we like to see. Mr Vaz, interestingly, has been at the centre of a debate with the former president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, Mr William Mahfood, who contended that people telling him to call Daryl Vaz to solve problems was not cutting it.

We need more problem solvers, even with the best of systems in place. In other words, we need more public servants like Daryl Vaz.