Editorial | A consensus path to recover

As the magnitude of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Melissa begins to become clearer, it is obvious that Jamaica has a massive recovery project on its hands.

In the west of the island, where the hurricane made landfall from the south on Monday, before making a ravaging exit on the other side, people’s lives have been severely upended.

Indeed, hundreds of houses have been badly damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of people are either displaced or living rough in their homes.

In many instances, public infrastructure is severely compromised or in ruins – electricity, telecommunications, water systems, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and so on. Additionally, in the agricultural belt in the west, especially in the south St Elizabeth region, thousands of tons of crops have been lost in fields, some of which now resemble ponds and lakes. The bottom line, domestically-grown food will be short for several months, putting pressure on prices, fuelling inflation.

The island’s vital tourism industry is also badly disrupted. The industry’s proven resilience notwithstanding, it will take time, perhaps months, before there is a return to some semblance of normality.

For scale and intensity Melissa (but perhaps for Hurricane Gilbert in 1989, in which an over 80 per cent of the island’s homes lost their roofs and the economic cost of the disaster placed, by various global analysts at between a quarter and 65 per cent of GDP) is probably the devastating hurricane storm Jamaica has faced in recent times.

WoN’T BE EASY

The bottom line: recovery won’t be easy. It will be a difficult and tedious process that will rankle people’s nerves. And it will be expensive, although the full estimate of the damage isn’t yet done.

What is clear, however, is that while the expected US$150 million payout from the government’s catastrophe bond, plus whatever is provided under the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) parametric insurance scheme, can kickstart the rehabilitation, it won’t be sufficient to finance a full recovery. The government, therefore, will not only have to be creative but also set priorities and be prudent and efficient in its execution of projects.

Managing a crisis, such as is now faced by Jamaica, will clearly be difficult. It will be harder, as this newspaper noted on Wednesday, in the absence of political consensus, especially if the political opposition snarls and quibbles over priorities, or complains about perceived unfairness in how, and to whom, the administration provides relief.

It is important that the recovery process, beyond narrow political contentiousness, be made a genuinely national project that is pursued in urgency, efficiently and with transparency.

In that regard, The Gleaner has two suggestions, which should help in establishing a political consensus around the recovery exercise, and the wasting of time in attempts at inventing the wheel. There is something that can be taken off the shelf and, with slight modifications, if necessary, be put immediately to use.

First, whatever may be residual angst over government’s handling of proposed bi-partisan discussions on constitutional reform, Prime Minister Andrew Holness should urgently convene the so-called Vale Royal Talks between himself and the Leader of the Opposition, Mark Golding, to trash out what, with respect to the recovery programme, will be removed from the political hustings. This will mean the government bankable assurances about the project’s fairness and fully transparent execution.

SECOND OBSERVATION

The second observation – and proposal – relates the government’s approach to Hurricane Ivan in 2004, that left an estimated US$595 million worth of damage, including the submerging of scores of homes in Portland Cottage in Old Harbour, St Catherine.

The prime minister at the time, P.J. Patterson, established a quango called the Office of National Reconstruction (ONR) to oversee the rehabilitation programme as well as ensure, as Mr Patterson put it, “the equitable distribution of relief benefits and supplies”. It also collected and allocated private relief funds sent to the island.

Notably, Danville Walker, who was the director of elections, was seconded to the ONR as its chairman and CEO. The other members of the board included representatives from the Office of Disaster Relief and Emergency Management (ODPEM), the trade union movement, the private sector and civil society organisations. The government had minority membership.

A year ago, reminiscing about the performance of the ONR with the Observer newspaper, Mr Walker said: “I think we did very well. We raised about $6 billion, if I can recall, for the hurricane interventional recovery; repaired over 1,000 schools; (and) a number of police stations…

“We built about 242 homes in Portland Cottage, Old Harbour Bay and in Westmoreland, and countless other projects that were brought to our attention as in need, even up to Hope Gardens…”

And critically, according to Mr Walker, “At the end of it we had no scandals”.