KINGSTON, Jamaica—Newly appointed director general at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) Commander Alvin Gayle, has outlined plans to strengthen Jamaica’s disaster response through a new logistics system designed to track, manage and deliver relief more efficiently across the island as the country continues to recover from Hurricane Melissa.

Speaking at a special press briefing on Thursday, Gayle said his first priority in the role is to modernise ODPEM’s operations by allowing real-time monitoring of relief supplies.

“Significantly, as we are in the relief phase, one of the very prominent things is to be able to establish a huge logistics software capability so we can monitor not only what is in our ODPEM stores,” Gayle explained.

He said the new system will help the agency track inventory, coordinate the movement of supplies, and plan resupply operations more effectively addressing long-standing challenges in managing large-scale relief efforts.

“That’s one of the very first things we’re going to achieve, and I believe we should be able to achieve that in a matter of coming days so we can actually look at what is coming, look at what is going on, look at resupply timelines, also starting to manage when we are needing to resupply persons we’ve already supplied,” he continued.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, who welcomed Gayle’s appointment, said tighter military and civil coordination would speed up the response and build lasting capacity within the disaster-management agency.

“The logistical capability of the JDF [Jamaica Defence Force] is certainly best in class in the region and that is what is giving us now the horsepower to be able to deal with a Category 5 level disaster. So the JDF gives the legs and arms to the management functions of the emergency. So it makes sense that there is seamless coordination between the JDF and ODPEM,” Holness said.

He said this restructuring places ODPEM and the JDF under one umbrella, ensuring stronger coordination and more efficient disaster response led by Gayle, who was seconded from the army to head the agency.

Holness also noted that this is intended to remove administrative bottlenecks and allow decisions to be taken more quickly in the field.

“So we expect that there will be seamless operations. Why is this so? In the relief phase, there may be a sense that we will do this for a few weeks. I want to just bring everybody’s mind to the reality that this will be a few months operation.The country needs to understand this. We have relief entities here, some of them are capable of carrying out long-term relief but most of them are not capable to carry out long-term relief and will take up stumps and leave the theatre of operations after a few weeks,” he explained.