Jamaicans reunited with 43 loved ones in Bahamas
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign
Trade has assisted Jamaican families to locate 43 loved ones in The Bahamas in
the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian last month.
Portfolio Minister, Senator Kamina Johnson
Smith, said that “Jamaican families had contacted us with a desire to try to
locate 48 persons in The Bahamas from whom they had not heard. I’m very pleased
to advise that we have located 43 of them and they are in good health”.
“Regretfully, there are two persons whom we
have been unable to confirm any information on or locate them, and the three
remaining person, we have not only been unable to locate them but we’ve [also]
been unable to contact the families who had originally reported them, at the
numbers and contact information that they had given us,” she noted.
Senator Johnson Smith, who was addressing
the quarterly press briefing at the ministry’s New Kingston offices on Thursday
(October 3), said that efforts continue to relocate the remaining five persons.
She said that the Government stands in
“solidarity with our brothers and sisters in The Bahamas”.
“We gave thanks for the lives saved in The
Bahamas after the passage of Hurricane Dorian and we prayed for the lives
lost,” she said.
Minister Johnson Smith said that the
members of the Jamaica Defence Force’s (JDF) Disaster Assistance Response Team
(DART), who were deployed to The Bahamas to help in the recovery and
reconstruction efforts, are making a positive impact.
“Minister (of Foreign Affairs in The
Bahamas) Darren Henfield has expressed his appreciation for the work of the
DART and had shared, in particular, one of the major projects they had
successfully completed with the Dutch naval officers, which was the rebuilding
of the road that connects North Abaco to South Abaco,” she noted.
“Since
the disaster, persons were unable to transit both islands… except if they went
by boat or by helicopter, and this was extremely difficult and had become quite
expensive. The road was very key to their recovery efforts and Jamaica played a
big role in its reconstruction,” she said.
