‘Common nonsense’

WESTERN BUREAU: 

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has pushed back against mounting criticism over more than $1 billion in hurricane donations that remained largely unspent months after Hurricane Melissa, accusing critics of promoting what he described as “common nonsense” while ignoring the broader scale of the Government’s recovery effort.

“Sometimes you have things that are common sense and sometimes you have things that are common nonsense,” he said on Monday at the Lewis Town Early Childhood Institution in St Elizabeth, as one of two Labour Day national projects unfolded.

A real-time audit by the Auditor General's Department had found that only $26.2 million of the $1.44 billion in cash donations in the wake of the Category 5 hurricane had been spent up to April. The report also noted that funds donated after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 also remained unspent.

“Not everything that appears urgent is wise, and not everything that is wise appears immediately, so I want you to ruminate on that. The obvious can mislead, and wisdom requires deeper judgement,” the prime minister said on Monday.

He said the controversy had become one of the fiercest political attacks facing his administration, disclosing that even people who supported the Government were struggling to defend it.

“I started there because I received a note from an elderly lady from this constituency who said, ‘Prime Minister, you have to address this issue because I can’t explain it to the people in my community why the Government got $1.4 billion and never spent it. It’s the hottest thing on the ground in terms of criticism of the Government.’”

Additional concerns raised in the audit included the absence of formal agreements governing the retention of donated funds and insufficient documentation for roofing supplies distributed under the Government’s ROOFS Programme.

But Holness insisted the criticism ignored the wider context of the Government’s hurricane response, which he said would ultimately cost taxpayers roughly $67 billion.

“The Government is projected to spend J$67 billion on hurricane relief and recovery,” the prime minister said, while urging Jamaicans to think through the process.

According to Holness, one of the most strategic decisions involved providing financial support to the Jamaica Public Service Company to speed up the restoration of electricity.

“A large part of that would be the loan that we gave to the JPS, so that you could have gotten back electricity faster than ever before in the history of restoration after any disaster in Jamaica,” he said of the $67 billion being spent directly for the country’s 2026-2027 fiscal Budget.

“That was a strategic decision, it was highly criticised. ‘Why is the Government lending money to JPS?’ But the recovery was quick, water and electricity came back very quickly. We thought deeply about it, we looked at the ramifications and we took some good decisions,” Holness noted.

Holness said the administration had already deployed approximately $10 billion through the ROOFS Programme, benefiting close to 50,000 Jamaicans. 

“Through the NHT, almost $2 billion has been spent and that is not included in the $67 billion,” he added.

The prime minister also pointed to repairs being carried out at schools, hospitals, clinics and road networks, along with the unprecedented cost of debris removal following the Category 5 hurricane.

“We have never had to deal with that level of debris before in the history of Jamaica,” he said.“When you look at Independence Park here and what it was, and the Black River Market, the Government doesn’t get credit for that because it’s our jobs; that’s what we must do.”

“But we have to tackle this view that the Government isn’t doing anything or that nothing has been done, that is patently untrue.”

Holness also challenged arguments that the $1.4 billion in donations should simply have been distributed directly to victims.

“You also have to consider that we assessed close to 100,000 as being in need and we are giving the maximum grant of $500,000. If we have given the $1.4 billion in grants, how many Jamaicans would get $500,000? That’s about 2,500.”

“So let me again put some more context to the conversation,” he said.

The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), however, has sharply criticised the pace of spending, arguing that thousands of vulnerable Jamaicans remained in distress months after the storm.

[email protected]