Word of this came from Prime Minister David Thompson, just moments after he committed $1 million to the construction of the Barbados Red Cross Societys new headquarters at Warrens, St. Michael. He was at the time addressing those gathered at the unveiling of the plans for that facility, yesterday morning at the Island Inn Hotel.

According to Director General of the Red Cross, Edmund Bradshaw, that facility will be constructed on land adjacent to the Warrens Polyclinic, which will be leased from the Government. The new headquarters at Warrens, which replaces the one gutted by fire in 1999, will consists of a disaster storage space, a medical bay, an ambulance bay, training rooms and a facility for the Meals and Wheels Programme among other facilities.

On the issue of the legislation regarding charities, the Prime Minister explained that following a study he conducted for the Caribbean Policy Development Centre some time back on charitable giving and the structure of management, he realised that the laws related to charities in Barbados were unsatisfactory, and needed to be updated.

... I also felt that the method of supporting charitable giving and the manner in which income tax concessions are granted for that charitable giving, was in many cases not supportive of persons who would want to make small donations  what you may call the widows mite, but what may nevertheless, added together in support of one or two major charities in Barbados make a lot of difference, he said.

As such, he said that he is of the belief that we need to find a mechanism to assist people in getting benefits from large one off contributions to major charitable projects, such as the Red Cross project, which no doubt supports Governments initiative in relation to disaster preparedness.

Its a major capital investment and there is no reason why those who make large contributions should not be able to get some significant benefit, not just businesses, but others... We have a lot of former NGO people in the Cabinet who are very anxious to look at it  to look at the laws relating to charities, ensuring there is better management and oversight of the operation of charities, but secondly to find an easier way to give people the benefits from making a contribution to charities, particularly financial contributions.

Speaking to disaster preparedness, which he said was one of the topics discussed during the recent meeting between President of the United States, George Bush and CARICOM Heads of State, he said that there was a role for the Red Cross to play in mitigating such disaster.

With that in mind, making reference to the proposed constituency councils, he suggested that the chairpersons of the District Emergency Organisations should be members, as they would be able to assist the Councils in directing the resources to the work of disaster preparedness in every community.

I believe that there are specific kinds of people who should sit on those councils, who represent organisations in communities and are there, as of right. I think that where there are functioning District Emergency Organisations in communities, the chairman or a representative should sit on the community council and the resources that Government makes available to those entities, can be targeted towards having organisations... such as the Red Cross-run community programmes, particularly in the area of disaster preparedness, he said.

As such, he told the organisation that they need to prepare for such development, as their work can be strengthened by having access to the funds made available to constituency councils to build up community lives. (JR)