THREE weeks after disgruntled residents of Portland Cottage, Clarendon, who were displaced by Hurricane Beryl complained about being excluded from the Shearer’s Heights Housing Scheme, which was used to relocate individuals after Hurricane Ivan wiped out several homes there in 2004, Richard Thompson, acting director general of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), says several of those householders either sold or rented the houses allocated to them and returned to the low-lying lands.

“There are a lot of informal settlements across Jamaica, not only Portland Cottage. Portland Cottage during Hurricane Ivan got extensive damage and so the then Government did a resettlement, but what a lot of persons did was to sell the new property that they got or rented it, and moved back to the where they were moved from,” Thompson told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

While confirming the report of the disgruntled residents that some of the new owners had migrated, Thompson insisted that “most persons rented out the facility and moved back to their community”.

The acting ODPEM director general made the disclosure while providing the Sunday Observer with an update as to the number of Jamaicans still in shelters three weeks after the passage of Hurricane Beryl.

It was a similar story from some residents of the community when the news team visited last week.

One resident, who declined to speak on record for fear of her life, claimed that she knows people who lived outside Portland Cottage but still received houses in Shearer’s Heights despite not needing the assistance.

“All mi weh mi house top blow off no get no help. Mi no get relocated all now. Mi still live next to the community. Even the other day mi roof blow off again during Beryl, a good thing mi did send weh mi kids. All now I don’t see anything happening,” the disgruntled woman said.

Another resident, Sylvia Roxborough, said lots are in Shearer’s Heights that would benefit people on the flat, but they are unable to benefit because the property was given to someone else who is not using it.

“Right now, if they should come in and build more rehabilitation houses people would take them, people would occupy them. Also we need persons from the community who are not biased to do the distribution to be there to ensure people who really need the house get it. We have persons who get the house and sell it back, that no make no sense” said Roxborough.

She said during the passage of Hurricane Ivan the house she was living in was badly damaged and so she had to move.

“Mi end up at Shearer’s Heights because mi never have nowhere fi go with mi kids. Mi did inna somebody house after Ivan and the person want dem house and mi go to the then MP [Member of Parliament Ruddy Spencer] and this house belongs to somebody who got another house from a different agency elsewhere so she occupied that one.

“Right now mi no have no papers fi say a my house, mi only live here. Until this day, I was one of the persons who was affected by Hurricane Ivan and still have not received a unit for myself. Right now mi buy some blocks and can’t add on it because she say she want her house. Mi live here but mi no happy, mi nah lie, right now me would go back to mi mother’s house but it want fix up because that house can hold mi and mi family comfortably. That house is located in the no-building zone in Portland Cottage,” added Roxborough.

When the Observer visited the Portland Cottage community on July 4 in the wake of Beryl, some residents — who claimed they were listed for relocation but were never rehoused — gave their version of the facts.

“Scheme build up deh so and I nuh get no house outta it; a nuh apply wi apply, a who fah name dem write down get it. We go through [hurricanes] Ivan [September 2004], Dean [August 2007], and now Beryl and the only thing we get a promise; wi don’t get nutten,”one resident Dewyane Thompson told the Observer.

The 16.6 hectares (40 acres) of land was identified in Portland Cottage through the then Office of National Reconstruction (ONR) which said the new scheme would be constructed in two phases, with priority being given to those people who were left homeless.

The ONR also said that those residents who still had a proper structure, but who lived in a location considered to be unsafe, would be given attention in the second phase.

Additionally, the ONR said three similar communities were to be built across the island — at Rocky Point in Clarendon, Old Harbour Bay in St Catherine, and Brighton in Westmoreland.

But the residents said nothing had gone as planned for the starter home settlement for Portland Cottage.

“The selection process, nobody really know; more than name write down. Friendship, and that’s it. We lost everything. Other people fraid fi speak out but we just realistic and we talk the truth. Three house inna mi yard and wi nuh get nutten pertaining to the scheme. Water reach five, six feet and no priority. Is a friendship basis,” one resident charged.

“We need help. Some people who get help nuh really value it, and who need help nuh get it. Mi shop, mi house, whole a it gone,“ declared the resident.

Another three disgruntled residents with whom the Observer spoke said they had also suffered the greatest losses during Ivan in 2004 but ended up not being lodged at Shearer’s Heights.

They told the newspaper that individuals from as far as Point Hill in St Catherine had received dwellings. According to the residents, some of the lucky recipients sold the starter houses while others have migrated, leaving their houses shuttered.

“This the third hurricane [since] they said they were building a scheme for all these people here at Sandy Spot because they were flooded. When the scheme build, even people from St Catherine get house, a most of these from the scheme don’t get any house so they had to rebuild what they had. And the hottest part of it is that after Ivan they put a sign to say no-building zone, but we didn’t have a choice,” one woman told the Observer.

Meanwhile, Thompson last Tuesday said at last count on Sunday gone, there were 21 individuals down from nearly 2,000 remaining in shelters in the Rocky Point community in Clarendon which was ravaged by Beryl which scoured the island’s south coast.

“We had eight persons as well out in two shelters in Manchester, those persons are no longer there based on the reports but we still have to check because sometimes persons will leave but return depending on what’s happening at home, they return,” Thompson told the Observer.

Those individuals he said suffered total loss.

“A lot of times, what you find is that when persons are still in shelters they have had extensive damage. So in our damage assessment, we have from level one to level four, so a lot of times the persons still remaining in shelters have suffered level-four damage. We are still monitoring and doing the necessary work in terms of overall distribution and also ensuring that we are managing the system, because one of the things we have been doing is to ensure that there is overall control in terms of how we manage supplies coming into country and how we distribute,” Thompson said.

One of the many abandoned houses in Shearer’s Heights Housing Scheme which was established to relocate residents of Portland Cottage displaced by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Another abandoned house in Shearer’s Heights Housing Scheme.