Barbados is now home to a crucial new asset for regional disaster preparedness: the Caribbean Regional Logistics Hub and Centre of Excellence, officially opened at the Grantley Adams International Airport. Minister of Home Affairs, Wilfred Abrahams, lauded the facility as a significant development for the entire Caribbean region.
The expansive warehouse is slated to be equipped over the coming weeks with an initial 1,300 pallets of critical supplies, including food items, medical provisions, and other essential goods for emergency use in the event of a natural disaster.
Minister Abrahams underscored the hub’s immense value, particularly as the hurricane season approaches. “As the Minister for Home Affairs, I approach the hurricane season with some degree of trepidation because we can’t control what happens,” he stated. “I hope that nothing happens for Barbados, but in the event that it does, we have within our own country the ability to store large amounts of relief supplies.”
Abrahams emphasized that the hub’s capacity goes beyond just foodstuffs, accommodating “generators, I’m talking big bulky items that we actually have nowhere else to store them.”
He further highlighted Barbados’ strategic geographical importance, which was a key factor in its selection as the hub’s location. “It doesn’t just affect us because of our geographical location, and that’s why we were chosen. Because of our geographical location, anything affecting the rest of the Caribbean has to pass Barbados first,” Minister Abrahams explained, stressing the facility’s regional benefit and its role in bolstering collective resilience against natural disasters.