By The Guardian\Natricia Duncan Caribbean correspondent
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Caribbean leaders struggling to raise hundreds of millions after Hurricane Beryl wiped out entire islands have asked the UK government to back a “Marshall plan” to rebuild their devastated countries.
The hurricane, which made landfall in the Caribbean on 1 July, killed at least 11 people, demolished more than 90% of buildings in parts of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and left thousands homeless and without running water, electricity and food.
The letter, addressed to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, points to the continuous pattern of destructive hurricanes in the Caribbean, with Dominica losing more than 200% of its GDP after damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017.
The letter, signed by the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, SVG and Grenada, warns that Caribbean countries cannot sustain the rising debt from rebuilding again and again.
The letter calls for “immediate debt cancellation provided through a pre-arranged mechanism that triggers automatically in the event of a qualifying disaster such as the current one”. READ MORE…
