LOCAL Government and Community Development Minister Desmond McKenzie is insisting that Jamaica was well-prepared for Hurricane Beryl, dismissing as mischief makers critics who have said otherwise.

“I’ve seen, in this hurricane, the response of the Government of Prime Minister Andrew Holness. It would take somebody who has devious intentions to question the performance of the Administration,” he told a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday.

McKenzie said he is wary of people “who for want of creating mischief to be giving false information and to be painting a false picture of the Government’s response”.

The Opposition, in particular, has been critical of the Government’s readiness prior to the storm and its level of response in Beryl’s aftermath.

Describing Beryl as a trial run for other weather events anticipated for the ongoing hurricane season, Opposition Leader Mark Golding said he was not pleased with the Administration’s level of preparedness or response.

During a tour of Alligator Pond in Manchester last Sunday, Golding said the Government needs to make greater effort in terms of its preparation for such disasters.

“There are gullies, for example, that need to be cleaned…We need to prepare for hurricanes in a more meaningful way going forward, not an announcement the day before of some drain cleaning or an allocation to MPs (Members of Parliament) which may take time to access. We need to have relief supplies and equipment ready to be rolled out in areas which are prone to being damaged. A whole different approach needs to be taken. We have lessons to be learnt from Beryl for sure,” Golding said.

“I would have thought we would see more activity from the State agencies in the badly affected communities by now. I can understand a day or two of assessment but I think we are beyond that now and people are really starting to feel the effects of the deprivation caused by Beryl — no light, no water. This is the time when we want to see ODPEM (Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management) and the other State agencies showing themselves in the communities and delivering blankets, bedding, food items, water, and so on,” Golding added.

The Opposition leader claimed he was not looking to politicise the matter in any way, “but where we see the gaps we want to call them out and bring them to the attention of the Government so that we can respond quickly to them. Right now people are hurting in many parts of Jamaica. The assessment needs to move rapidly [so as] to get relief to people.”

McKenzie argued, however, that while not perfect, the Government’s plan worked well and vowed to “use the lessons from this one to improve going forward. And I think that that is important because it is going to be difficult for you to plan in advance of a disaster.”

He added: “But what we can look at is the systems that work. And if you ask me how much of the system worked, I would say, I would say, nine out of 10 of what we put in worked, so we will improve on that. And I believe also, what is going to be important is that we are going to be looking to expand our public education. It was not lacking, but I think the more we develop and encourage and educate will help us to improve in the areas.”

Minister with responsibility for information Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon agreed that the Administration is always working to improve.

“And so we learn from every single situation that we have and we make it better. And remember, we went through COVID and we learned a lot through COVID and a lot of the mechanisms being put in place, in terms of relief, came out of the learnings of COVID. And so of course, with this one, we’re going to learn even more and be better at it,” she said.

She noted however that one area the Government will have to look at is greater use of technology.

“One of the things that has hampered a lot of our work as Government has been the lack of communication and the coverage from our partners. And we are speaking, as you know, to [telecommunications providers] Digicel and Flow on that area. A lot of them were dependent on JPS (Jamaica Public Service) for electricity.

“We have to look at how we have other electricity-generation facilities that are in place. And so that’s one area; we have to look at other areas of communication, how we build redundancy. So if the mobile network is down, what else can we do? And we actually have offers of assistance from overseas for mobile-type units that could be deployed in an area that loses connectivity. So there’s some key lessons that we’ve learned and especially just making the system more robust because as you saw, Hurricane Beryl was offshore and look at all the damage,” she said.