PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday said it would provide TT$20 million (US$3.2 million) in financial aid to Jamaica to assist the fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) state to recover from the destruction caused by Hurricane Dean.

The Patrick Manning administration also revealed that it would consider providing financial aid to St Lucia and Dominica which were also badly affected by the 2007 Atlantic season's first hurricane, which passed through the islands last weekend damaging infrastructure and severely impacting on the agricultural sector.

"Trinidad and Tobago is extremely pleased to come to the assistance of our brothers and sisters in the CARICOM region one more time," Foreign Affairs Minister Arnold Piggott said, recalling that similar aid was extended to Grenada when Hurricane Ivan ravished that country in 2004.

First-hand report

Piggott said Prime Minister Patrick Manning had spoken with his Jamaican counterpart, Portia Simpson Miller, to get a first-hand report of the damage done there, and had also learnt from this country's High Commission in Kingston that the storm had damaged Jamaica's public utilities, economic infrastructure and residential properties.

Piggott said similar checks with the governments of St Lucia and Dominica had revealed that those countries also suffered infrastructural damage because of Hurricane Dean.