Passionate and on the brink of tears, Opposition People’s National Party Member of Parliament (MP) for St James Southern Nekeisha Burchell on Monday appealed for Hurricane Melissa relief assistance for her constituents, the majority of whom, she says, are not only homeless but hungry and trapped in their communities with the carcasses of their livestock.

Speaking at a media conference at the party’s Old Hope Road Headquarters, Burchell, who is director of marketing communications at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, said she struggled to answer the desperate questions from her constituents about where they stood in the line-up to receive relief supplies.

“When I go to the communities I don’t know what to say to them because they ask me ‘MP, see my house, it was right here [but] it is no longer here, what do I do?’ I tell them I have not yet gotten word from the Government to tell us how we are going to help them to rebuild and to get their lives back together,” an emotional Burchell told the briefing.

“We are not asking because we are greedy. We are asking because the collaboration and the coordination on the ground is not reaching our people in South St James,” she said, noting that only one of the five routes to enter the “vast” constituency has been cleared so far with the others being blocked by downed lines, poles, landslides and rivers.

Burchell, who said five individuals in the constituency died during the onslaught of the Category 5 system, told journalists that she rued instructions given to residents who took refuge in shelters ahead of the storm.

“We still have communities that are marooned and do not have access to food. When we advised them to go to a shelter, like the shelter at Cambridge High School, we told them we were advised by the Government that food would come after the storm, which was a mistake, because some of them went in from as early as Monday of last week [before the hurricane hit on Tuesday] and they have not had food until now,” she said.

“We were able to send a little blow-up boat across the roadway to get to some and they got food for one night because the boat couldn’t hold much more. We have seen the helicopters flying in the sky above us in South St James, but most times they are going to St Elizabeth or Westmoreland, they are going to the sexy places where disaster grief is big profit and big public relations opportunities,” she added.

“In South St James we are farmers, we are humble people, we don’t like to beg but I am appealing on our behalf because we urgently need food for our people marooned in places like Catadupa, Jungle, Awful Gully, Retrieve. They were only able to get their dead out of the community just two days ago,” Burchell said.

She further appealed for the health authorities to move quickly to assist with the removal of dead animals from water sources in the communities.

“The cows are still floating, the goats are still floating in the waters that have taken and submerged communities like Spring Bottom in the Roehampton area,” Burchell said, noting that some 70 per cent of housing stock, business, livestock, and agriculture have been lost.

“I am asking you to help us to airlift some food into the communities…We have an urgent need in South St James and I know everybody is trying. All I’m asking is, don’t forget South St James in all of this… we need the donations to come to us too. We don’t want to stay left behind because we are deep rural,” she said.

Her colleague MP for St Catherine North Central, Natalie Neita-Garvey, said there had been disturbing gaps in the preparation of shelters and also charged that the Opposition was not included in any disaster preparedness or operational meetings ahead of the system’s impact.

“Our shelters must be ready and suitable to receive people before the storm with basic supplies prepositioned and shelter managers available, trained, and ready to serve. In some instances across Jamaica, the list of shelter managers included persons who were deceased, had migrated, or were simply unwilling to serve; these are gaps we must correct,” Neita-Garvey stated.

Hurricane Melissa now holds the record as the most intense storm ever to make landfall on Jamaica packing winds of 185 miles per hour.

The mega-storm which made landfall on Tuesday, October 28 near New Hope, Westmoreland, causing catastrophic flooding across the southern and western belt, left the island after effecting untold damage on infrastructure, vegetation, and lives. The death toll from the ferocious system is said to be at 32 so far.

People’s National Party Member of Parliament for St James Southern Nekeisha Burchell speaking at a media conference at the party’s Old Hope Road Headquarters on Monday.