West Indies Cricket Fans

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit pledged on Tuesday that drinking water and food would be distributed to “every single house”. He told a press conference that scores of workers were poised to begin road clearance and doctors were on their way to Dominica’s main hospitals.

Up to Tuesday morning, the entire 290 square mile isle was still without electricity but power is expected to be restored to essential services by Wednesday.

“The need is huge because the entire country has been affected,” the Prime Minister, who last week broke down in tears when describing Maria’s devastation, said. “But we are working 24 hours a day to make life a little better for all of us,” he added.

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OVER A month has passed since the hurricanes struck the Caribbean.

Dominica, where over 90% of buildings were damaged, remains devastated. The island of Barbuda, entirely evacuated after Hurricane Irma ripped the island’s infrastructure apart, is being eyed-up by property sharks ready to exploit the crisis. Many thousands of people have had their lives torn apart.

In spite of our shared history, the UK’s help has been painfully slow and limited. Of the £62m spent, most has been on troops, ships and immediate relief for British Overseas Territories. Just £5m has gone towards Dominica - and only on short-term relief. Despite Prime Ministers Roosevelt Skerritt and Gaston Browne’s best efforts to mobilise the international community, the trickle of funds falls far short of what is needed.

The UK must do more. Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica are eligible under OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) rules, for now at least, for the kind of massive Official Development Assistance (ODA) that could bring about a genuine, transformative recovery that helps residents - not the foreign investors ready to swoop in.

As a proportion of our £13 billion aid budget, that £5m looks paltry. In the longer term, the UK must financially and politically back Caribbean regional institutions to transform the region’s climate resilience. That can only truly happen if the Tories abandon their neo-colonial approach to the region.

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Shane Shillingford remembers Hurricane Maria hitting Dominica....

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Venezuela has written off Dominica’s outstanding PetroCaribe debt of more than US$100 million. Jorge Arreaza, Venezuela’s minister of foreign affairs, said Tuesday that he had been instructed by President Nicolas Maduro to announce the move as a gesture of solidarity between the two nations.

"Due to the difficult conditions our sister people of Dominica is facing after Hurricane Maria, Venezuela announces the start of a process of short-term and long-term debt forgiveness," he said during a forum on climate change organized by the United Nations and the Caribbean Community of Regional Integration. "This is to allow the government of brother prime minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, funds for the reconstruction of his country as well as the creation of fiscal space to access new credit," the foreign minister continued.

The PetroCaribe Initiative was created in 2005, by late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Since then, several Central American and Caribbean countries have joined to reach a total of 18 members. The scheme allows beneficiaries to pay only 40 percent of a shipment’s invoice in the short term and postpone payment on the other portion, which can be paid in a 25-year credit with a grace period of two years and an annual interest rate of one to two percent.

Countries can also barter to pay the debt with different good and services, from cattle to nutmeg. In 2013, Venezuela received 650,217 tons of food and materials – from beans to components to make cement – to pay off a portion of the invoices (16 percent less than in 2012). The U.S. government has been looking to undercut Venezuela's ties with Caribbean nations by proposing alternatives to PetroCaribe.

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There are warnings the worst is still to come from a storm in the US that has already been linked to the deaths of at least 12 people.

Storm Florence has been dumping what has been called "epic" rain as it moves through North and South Carolina.

The volume of rain will cause "catastrophic" flash flooding, the US National Hurricane Center says.

The slow-moving storm is heading west, but on Sunday it is due to turn north towards Ohio.

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