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Editorials
That waste in Portland Cottage
Monday, June 29, 2009
Just looking at the photographs published with yesterday's lead story in the Sunday Observer leaves us puzzled as to how the authorities who provided hurricane relief houses for the people of Portland Cottage expected anyone to live comfortably in those units.
Naturally, we didn't expect that mansions would have been built by the Office of National Reconstruction (ONR) for the people who unfortunately suffered loss during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
However, we would have thought that shelter affording the beneficiaries some level of comfort and dignity would have been the basic premise on which to design such units.
As it turned out, the houses, particularly the one-room units, do not provide adequate space for the hurricane victims, most of whom live with their families.
The upshot is that many of the houses are now either empty and overrun by goats, or are being occupied by people to whom they were not awarded under the ONR's relocation programme.
Of course, Mr Danville Walker, the man who headed the ONR at the time of the reconstruction effort, makes a valid point that the neglect of the houses has its genesis in the fact that the beneficiaries were never really required to pay for the units, given that US Government funds were used to construct them.
And even in the cases where people were asked to pay a paltry $1,000 a month for the two-room units built by the ONR, that requirement, we have been told, has been largely ignored.
Obviously the authorities failed to establish a monitoring system for this programme to ensure that the beneficiaries who were asked to pay actually did so.
It is also clear that this project has been affected by the 'freeness' mentality that exists at too many levels in this society. Sadly, that kind of thinking has been encouraged by many of the people who, in their quest for public office, fail to divest their supporters of this culture.
It is, however, a serious flaw that needs to be corrected if we intend to move forward. For the harsh reality of today's world is that spoon-feeding is no longer in vogue.
And the sooner we rid ourselves of the comfort of preferential treatment, the better for us.
We acknowledge that, given the global financial crisis and its brutal effect on our economy, Jamaica will not be in a position anytime soon to decline offers of assistance from agencies like the USAID, whose funds were used to build those one-room units at Portland Cottage.
That, therefore, is why we are amazed at the careless use of those funds in Portland Cottage, the State's lack of monitoring of the project and the fact that no one has been held accountable for this obvious waste of resources.
What has transpired in Portland Cottage post-Hurricane Ivan certainly does not qualify us to continue enjoying the confidence of international aid agencies.
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