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Business Sustainability and Minimum Down Time

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Mantra for BCP Participating Chamber Members

As St Lucia and the rest of the region start to place more focused attention on the hurricane season, the Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce continues to encourage its members and the wider business community to proactively protect their investments and livelihoods by designing a workable business continuity plan. This is part of the Chamber’s commitment to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which it has indicated by leading a national ARISE Network. The commitment has been deepened by the Chamber’s active participation in the Unite Project, which brings together five Caribbean Francophone Countries to work together, share experiences and learn from each other in a five thematic areas including Disaster Risk Reduction.

This was the second Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Workshop hosted in 2019 by the Chamber, and this one was equally enthusiastically received by participants. The Chamber remains convinced that being prepared by assessing, transferring and reducing risks, are crucial steps in ensuring firms survive the impact of disasters, be it man made, natural, cyber or biological. Thus the Chamber is pursuing a mission to ensure that its members are equipped with the knowledge necessary to ensure their business’s survival post disasters through BCP training and other measures soon to be announced.

Working closely with NEMO and utilizing the expertise of their trainer, combined with the knowledge of recently trained (Unite and UNDRR) Caron Charlemagne, the practical and powerful training session took place on June 13th and 14th 2019 at Coco Resorts. Seventeen participants took part in a highly interactive and informative training programme.

Participants came from a range of sectors including the Wholesale, Manufacturing, Tourism, Retail, Entertainment, Utilities and Telecommunications sectors.  Subjects explored during the two day workshop included Risk Assessment, Business Impact Assessment; and Operationalization of the Business Continuity Plan.

Based on the outstanding feedback, the Chamber is confident that participants have gained significant knowledge which they can take back to their firms, share and implement for the betterment of the firms. The Chamber is at present designing a series of Disaster Preparedness and Business Continuity Planning Clinics for its smaller members in the north and south of the island.

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