JAMAICA is seeking funding to finance its relief effort in Haiti.

“We have constraints as everybody knows and therefore we are seeking assistance in terms of funding to cover the cost of the Jamaican assistance,” stated Information Minister Daryl Vaz who spoke to media on Saturday at the Norman Manley International Airport.

Haiti then Jamaica are ranked lowest in the United Nation’s human development index for the Caribbean. Jamaica has a $1.3 trillion debt and is seeking balance of payment support up to US$1.3 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The cost of Jamaica’s assistance to its Caribbean neighbour remains unknown.

“It will definitely cost us but we are trying to minimise it. I do not have any figure as of right now, but I know that the very fuel for the coast guard vessels those have been donated and the private sector help has been enormous,” Vaz stated at the press conference which followed the meeting between Prime Minister Bruce Golding and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said that the meeting did not discuss US financial assistance to Jamaica.

Clinton landed in Kingston on a C130 Hercules plane at 7:50 pm, met with Golding then boarded the Secretary of State’s Boeing 757 at 8:45 pm. Haiti’s airspace has limited flights into the island following the earthquake.

Vaz said that Golding and Clinton agreed that governmental assistance to Haiti should be “sustained” for the “long term”.

“So we would like to see staggered assistance going down the road,” Vaz stated. “…because this is not a one-week, or a month, or six month recovery process. This is long term.”

Despite Jamaica’s recession, individuals and companies made donations following last week’s magnitude seven earthquake that rocked Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.