The prime minister admitted that the ROOFS Programme which is designed to help Jamaicans who suffered damage to their houses as a result of Hurricane Melissa is not going as fast as it could.

He addressed the matter of Jamaica’s recovery while speaking at the ‘Recover Better Conference’ organised by the Consulate General of Jamaica in New York on Thursday. It came two days after Opposition Members of Parliament criticised how the ROOFS programme is being rolled out.

The conference was billed as a one-day, action-oriented forum focused on advancing Jamaica’s post-disaster recovery and resilience efforts.

“There are lessons to be learnt about the relief phase, the humanitarian phase. I wouldn’t say it is perfect but to be fair to ourselves, we’re not comparing ourselves to perfection, we’re comparing ourselves to other countries and to other situations,” said Holness.

“Relative to other countries, as the experts have said, our relief and recovery effort is world class; without question,” he added.

The prime minister acknowledged that there will be the obvious critique as there must be in a democracy, stating that “the criticism is necessary to keep us grounded, keep us on our feet”. He told the audience that the Administration was now at the phase where it is about accelerating the recovery, with the critical part being achieved with 99 per cent restoration of electricity, water and healthcare facilities. “The country is functioning, it’s back up and running after such a devastating hurricane,” Holness said.

He noted that one of the remaining challenges related to the roof repair grants “because an important part of the recovery is the restoration of roofs because the main damage to households would have been the destruction of residencies, in particular roofs”.

According to the prime minister, the problem was not of a financial nature, “It’s not that the Government doesn’t have the resources, we’re not awash with cash but we have planned in advance for the disaster so we had some money set aside and because of good fiscal management of your resources, we were able to make certain budgetary allocations”.

“It is not an issue of the Government not having the resources, it is an issue of the bureaucracy to distribute,” Holness explained while pointing to similar experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl and presently.

“The truth is that a large number of Jamaicans are unbanked, they’re not formally a part of the financial system so they don’t have bank accounts to which we can readily send funds and when they do have, sometimes these accounts are inactive,” said Holness.

The prime minister said this is part of a larger problem of informality in the society which has to be addressed “if we are going to be able to serve persons quickly in times of disaster”.

To tackle the problem, Holness told the diaspora audience that the Government has in place what he referred to as the “agenda of the digital society” which is aimed at:

Giving all Jamaicans a unique identification which is already established under the National Identification System (NIDS) and supporting new financial digital banking systems to allow for digital payments

The prime minister said the Government has delivered all the grants in the first phase of the ROOFS Programme. He explained that there are individuals who have already received grants but for various logistical issues such as having no place to store building materials and waiting to supplement the grant from their own income, are yet to utilise the funds.