Melissa, Jamaica’s hurricane of the century, has come and gone and left in its wake a picture of devastation, consternation, and abject misery in the southern coastal region of the island.

The storm has left a trail of devastation from Alligator Pond to Treasure Beach, Black River into Westmoreland, and parts of St James. The fabled Jake’s Treasure Beach, the epicentre of community tourism in Jamaica, was left in ruins. If you knew how the place looked before, you could not help but be saddened by what was left of that business. It had just begun to recover from Hurricane Beryl only to have Melissa pour scorn on those efforts. We wish them well in any rebuilding effort they may undertake.

All eyes now have to turn to the rebuilding of communities on the south coast. It is going to take a great deal of capital and will on the part of the Government to lead a comprehensive initiative in this respect. One can be sure that assessments are now being done as to the likely cost of the rebuilding effort and how it is to be undertaken.

The payout from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) will be a tremendous help, but one cannot be sure that this will be sufficient to meet the enormous costs associated with any rebuilding plan. The Government must spare no effort in ensuring that funds are spent with the best transparency and accountability framework in place. The integrity of the rebuilding process must ensure that the best building standards are adhered to; the rehabilitation of physical infrastructure, including the rehabilitation of roads, bridges, and other infrastructure are done with efficiency and not chicanery; and that there is a clear depoliticisation of the process.

I do not know how much hope I can hold out for the latter concern given the corruption that often attends the deployment of many national projects of the kind envisaged in this rebuilding process. How closely can the governing party and the Opposition work in this regard? How much will both sides set aside petulance and personal animus and work together for the good of the country, which they professed after the last general election? Can we dare to hope for the best?

And speaking of road rehabilitation, I had occasion to travel to the Treasure Beach area the day after the storm hit. The roads largely held up, but in areas where they were broken there was cause for concern. The layer of asphalt on the underlying marl substrate was about one-quarter inch thick. I wondered whether this is the standard that will bedevil the comprehensive road rehabilitation project under the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) that is now underway. Melissa has provided a good opportunity for SPARK to re-evaluate its work with regard to the standards to be adhered to in road construction. It cannot be business as usual. The proper independent supervision must be done.

Then there is the matter of maintenance of the power grid. The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has once again been tested by a hurricane, this time a Category 5. Even in the most prosperous countries citizens can expect to lose power after such an event. But what struck me as I traversed the roadway to Treasure Beach and other areas in the south is the number of light poles that either fell to the ground or dangled precariously and treacherously over roadways.

Of special concern is that the poles that were uprooted were largely the ones that were put in after Hurricane Beryl. The dirt marks on some of these poles indicate that they were not buried beyond two or three feet in the ground. This, to me, speaks of lack of proper supervision. We know the urgency of restoring power to desperate consumers, but this urgency should not be at the expense of work being done properly. These are the little things to which attention must be paid or they can pose a greater risk, even to people’s lives, in the future.

The matter of telecommunications is also a sore point, the flaws of which are yet again revealed by a hurricane. My issue is largely with my carrier, Flow. I bought plans leading up to the hurricane, and after the hurricane I bought a five-day plan. I was not able to access the Internet, text, or even make calls for at least three days out of the five. Interestingly, you could make calls abroad but not locally. The network was persistently and irritatingly busy.

My contention is that Flow should compensate customers for this loss of service which was not within their control, or even Flow’s, given the hurricane. What irritated me more is that after the five-day plan ended on October 31 I was being messaged by Flow to resubscribe. I disabled the resubscribe button. But why press the customer to select a service you clearly cannot deliver? How many people bought plans unsuspectingly, not knowing that the network could not deliver this service. The responsibility has to be the network’s to disable its system that sends out an automatic message to resubscribe.

These may be small matters to some people, but they speak to the irritations of which I often speak in this column.

We will be watching the Government’s response to the recovery effort. At a glance, the initial response has not been stellar. It is not just the rehabilitation of the physical infrastructure that must be attended to, but the stress, anxiety, and other mental strains on an already mentally challenged population.

We truly need a joined-up effort if we are going to rebuild with integrity and true neighbourliness.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. He hosts a podcast — Mango Tree Dialogues — on his YouTube channel. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.

Raulston Nembhard