Dear Editor,

While the national news is rightly focused on the devastation in St Elizabeth and Westmoreland, we in Montego Bay are living in the shadow of a different kind of disaster: the catastrophic collapse of local governance in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.

The official narrative of a coordinated response is a fiction in our communities. Two weeks on we are navigating a crisis defined not by recovery, but by abandonment.

Where is the local command centre? Where is the clear, visible leadership from our mayor and councillors? The vacuum they have left is being filled by desperation and the commendable, but insufficient, efforts of private citizens. In my own community the roads were cleared not by government machinery but by a local hardware store owner. This is not a feel-good story; it is a damning indictment of a failed local government.

This leadership vacuum has bred injustice. We have witnessed the partisan distribution of aid, a practice that turns public tragedy into political “charitricks”. Meanwhile, critical public health infrastructure is ignored. The singular focus on the decimation of Catherine Hall, while a real economic blow, has come at the expense of people’s basic needs.

The Montego Bay Market, the very heart of our city’s food supply, was left to fester in muck for two weeks. Only after public outrage was it given a superficial cleaning. Allowing a primary food distribution point to become a biohazard is a direct threat to the health of this city, a risk far more immediate to the average citizen than the loss of commercial property.

Today, garbage piles high on our streets, and main roads in downtown Montego Bay remain obstructed. The message from our local authorities is clear: The recovery of Montego Bay is not a priority.

We are not asking for miracles; we are demanding the basic functions of a responsible Government. We need an impartial, needs-based aid system; a dedicated and visible command presence; and a priority list that puts public health and human dignity above all else.

The suffering in the south is real, but the crisis in Montego Bay is a symptom of a deeper sickness in our disaster response framework. It reveals how quickly local systems can fail and how official priorities can become dangerously disconnected from the people they are meant to serve. Jamaica, please do not look away from Montego Bay.

A frustrated citizen of Montego Bay