Peter Espeut | Is NaRRA really here to help the west?

I am sure that, when sympathetic Jamaicans and others overseas donated money to ease the sufferings of Hurricane Melissa victims in western Jamaica, they didn’t intend their hard-earned cash to be spent paying rent for space in a waterfront skyscraper in Kingston, whether one floor or two.

People who should know claim that there are suitable government-owned buildings fit for use as the secretariat of the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), yet the NaRRA was prepared to lease space from a private company for J$575 million over five years.

Who owns the Digicel building? Are any Cabinet ministers involved? Or big donors to the party? This is where we need solid investigative journalism.

Images of devastated homes and lives were used to solicit donations; the urgency was obvious; people’s lives and good health depended on quick action. And the money flowed in. Bless those good-hearted donors!

Yet, according to the Auditor-General’s Report of May 2026, out of J$1.44 billion in cash donations collected (including J$473.4 million and US$6.1 million from the Support Jamaica platform and direct sources) as of February 23, only J$26 million, or 1.8 per cent, had actually been spent.

The people in the west were suffering and growing more desperate, but the money was sitting in Kingston unused and in some bank earning interest. The donors must be reflecting: “We gave because we thought there was some urgency.” Will they ever give again?

The government must be aware that this failure to use the goodwill donations of our friends overseas will have consequences. After the next disaster, and there will be another disaster, people will be less inclined to donate, and poor Jamaicans will suffer.

And the AG’s report uncovered other irregularities. Has anyone been held accountable?

In 19 days, Hurricane Melissa victims will mark one year since their lives were upended, and must be asking why so little has been done to help them.

SLICK PUBLIC RELATIONS

Maybe the answer the government will give is that they were waiting for the NaRRA to be created and launched. Slick public relations has created the impression in people’s minds that the purpose of the NaRRA is to relieve the suffering of Melissa victims.

There certainly was no urgency in establishing NaRRA. One year on and NaRRA does not even have offices.

But it does not seem that the NaRRA will have much to do with reconstructing the homes and livelihoods of hurricane victims. The NaRRA seems to be a Trumpian organisation where power is concentrated at the top. It has no board of management and reports directly to the prime minister. Its projects do not need to go through the usual safeguarding procedures, such as scrutiny by the government’s environmental regulatory authority, getting building permission from municipal corporations, or following the regular procurement procedures of the National Contracts Commission (NCC). These shortcuts are supposed to make it nimble and agile, able to reconstruct quickly.

But the process lacks transparency and is open to abuse. Who gets government contracts is already a state secret; the list used to be updated regularly on the NCC website. Will we ever know who gets contracts from the NaRRA? There will be no required tendering process. How will we know whether the NaRRA doesn’t simply give the contracts to donors to the party?

The suspicion has been that the NaRRA will be used by the government to push through projects it was going to do anyway, but would probably have had difficulty getting planning permission for, projects that have nothing at all to do with western Jamaica or Hurricane Melissa damage.

We do have some evidence for this. In an interview with the JIS on October 5, NaRRA CEO Ambassador Major General (Ret’d) Antony Anderson named the early projects NaRRA will undertake. The interview is available on YouTube, and I encourage you to watch it for yourself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTDkNiX3IAI.

UPGRADE AIRFIELD

The locus of the interview was the old US military airstrip at Vernamfield, which NaRRA plans to upgrade as an essential contribution to Jamaica’s resilience in future disasters. Jamaica’s present international airfields are near sea level and prone to being affected by flooding and debris in a hurricane, which would hamper the flying in of relief supplies and workers.

Major General Anderson also explained that work on the 100-year-old Hermitage Dam was an early NaRRA project: “our part is … to scope it, to see, obviously along with National Water Commission and the ministry, to see what’s the best solution we can get: by constructing another dam? Increasing the catchment area? That’s where we are inclined to go, but the technical studies are really what determines how we do things … once we get our portfolio management office up and running, that is where we start to contract the technical work around the thing; there is lots to be done before you reach the stage where you can actually construct massive infrastructure like that”.

“And then, apart from water, there are some major sewage issues that we are likely to take on as well … downtown Kingston, for instance. It is a limiting factor on our ability to develop the city. … NaRRA is joining [with the ministry] at each stage the discussion will be with NaRRA and the ministry: what part of this do you do, what part of this do we do to get the best outcomes”.

What have any of these projects, needed though they may be, got to do with Melissa reconstruction, or western Jamaica, or relieving the suffering of the residents of St Elizabeth or Westmoreland?

Will the funds donated to relieve Hurricane Melissa victims in the west be spent on Kingston people?

But now we can see why NaRRA’s offices had to be in Kingston and not Montego Bay or anywhere in the west: because the major focus of NaRRA is on Kingston and St Andrew, and not the hurricane-ravaged areas of western Jamaica.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com