The Chief Executive Officer of Trinidad and Tobago's disaster management agency is leaving the job to return to his substantive post at the state-owned oil company, Petrotrin.National Security Minister Brigadier John Sandy told reporters Wednesday Colonel George Robinson, who was on secondment to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), will be leaving by mid-September.
Robinson joined the ODPM in 2008 and his term was due to expire in November. Sandy said Robinson is taking leave, which is why his departure date is in September.
The minister hopes to have a new CEO to "sit with him for a while to do a proper handover."
Robinson had offered his resignation when the new People's Partnership government took office but the government asked him to remain on the job.
He faced heavy criticism during the past week from government officials who said the agency failed to effectively handle the massive flooding that hit the country.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar complained about the slow response from the ODPM but it was Tabaquite MP Surujrattan Rambachan who was most vocal about the agency, saying publicly that his constituency got no assistance from the agency.
Robinson's defence was that the ODPM is a management agency that is supposed to manage the operations of the Fire Service, Police Service, the Defence Force, regional corporations and non-governmental organisations where the country faced natural disasters. He said the ODPM did the best it could with the resources available.
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